A CULINARY PIONEER
Lucille B. Smith accomplished much both in and out of the kitchen
Editor’s note: Texas joined the Union on Dec. 29, 1845, becoming the 28th state. The Houston Chronicle is marking the 175th milestone of Lone Star statehood with Spirit of Texas, stories on our fabled history.
Lucille B. Smith was one of the first African-American businesswomen in Texas. She was a chef, a cookbook author, an educator and a community leader who invented the first hot roll mix and created a first-of-its-kind curriculum at Prairie View A&M University. Her famous chili biscuits were served on American Airlines flights and at the White House.
Today, her great-grandsons, Chris and Ben Williams, continue in her footsteps at Lucille’s in the Museum District, where customers can enjoy Smith’s biscuits and elegant Southern cooking inspired by her recipes.
“We’re talking about huge shoes to fill,” says Ben about their great-grandmother, adding that her accomplishments opened doors for them to be successful in their own entrepreneurial ventures. “She gave us a whole life. We had to work for it, but this is a legacy we can live on.”
Born Lucille Elizabeth Bishop in Crockett, on Sept. 5, 1892, Smith was one of 11 children. She attended several colleges, including Prairie View A&M College, but graduated from Samuel Huston College (now HustonTillotson University) in Austin.
In 1911, she married her college sweetheart, Ulysses Samuel Smith, and the couple moved to Fort Worth. They had three children: two sons and one daughter, Gladys Hogan, Chris and Ben Williams’ grandmother.
Smith worked as a seamstress and a cook for many years for private clients. In 1927, she joined the Fort Worth Public School District as a teacher for a vocational program that trained Black students for domestic service jobs. Soon after, she started working at Camp Waldemar, a summer camp for privileged girls that still operates today, where she managed the kitchen.
In 1937, Prairie View A&M recruited Smith, who developed the country’s first college Commercial Foods and Technology Department that paired educational studies with an apprenticeship program.
Smith wrote a cookbook in 1941, but not just any cookbook. “Lucille’s Treasure Chest of Fine Foods” came in a box full of neatly organized recipe cards, which has since become a collectors’ item. A box reportedly sold for $1,650 at a virtual rare-book fair in June. Another box is displayed in the second-floor private dining room at Lucille’s in Houston, along with other photographs and memorabilia.
Around the same time as her cookbook’s publication, Smith organized a fundraiser for her church, St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church of Fort Worth, for which she sold a hot roll mix she had created. The profits raised $800. Lucille’s All Purpose Hot Roll Mix appeared in grocery stores a few years later, becoming the first commercial hot roll mix in the United States. By 1948, she was selling more than 200 cases of the boxes a week.
It wasn’t until 1974, at the age of 82, that Smith founded her company — one of the first African-American women in Texas to do so — Lucille B. Smith’s Fine Foods Inc.
Her mark on the culinary world reached far and wide. Her chili biscuits were served on American Airlines flights and at the White House during President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Smith was the first food editor of Sepia magazine, a Fort Worth-based publication focused on the achievements of Black Americans, launched around the same time as the groundbreaking Ebony magazine.
Smith was also deeply involved in community work. She was a member of the YWCA and the NAACP. She became the first Black woman to join the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. In 1965, she baked a fruitcake for each of the more than 300 military service members from Tarrant County who were serving in the Vietnam War. She was a member of her church for about 70 years; her obituary described her as a “dedicated Christian servant.”
Smith died in Brenham on Jan. 12, 1985, at 92. She is buried at St. Andrew’s Methodist in Fort Worth. The program for her funeral highlighted the following verse from Matthew 5:16 in the New Testament: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.”