Stephen Austin Smith was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on May 15, 1949. Growing up in Huntsville (Madison County, Arkansas), he attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. There he studied communications, completing both a bachelor’s (1972) and master’s (1974) degrees. Afterwards he earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University (Evaston, Illinois), completing his degree in 1983.

Following in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather Albert King and great-grandfather Charley King, both of whom had long careers as elected officals in Madison County, Smith entered politics, being elected to the Arkansas General Assembly in 1970. Serving in the House from 1971 to 1975, he afterwards was campaign manager in 1976 and chief of staff for Attorney General Bill Clinton in 1977-1978, as well as executive assistant for Governor Clinton in 1979-1980. He was elected as a delegate to state constitutional convention in 1979-1980, serving as vice-president. Afterwards he continued to be an active member of the Democratic Party. His wife, Lindsley Armstrong Smith, likewise served as a state representative from 2005 to 2010.

In 1982 he became a member of the University of Arkansas’s Department of Communications. He taught several undergraduate and graduate level classes. He was also an active professional, writing several books, including Mind, Myth, and the Southern Mind (1986), as well as numerous articles, reviews, and conference papers. He was a recipient of several fellowships which allowed him to serve as a visiting professor on colleges and universities both in and outside of the United States, including an Andrew Mellon Fellowship with the University of Pennsylvania (1989-1990), as well as one with the University of Cambridge’s Wolfson College (circa 1992-1994). Subjects of his writings included political communications, the culture of the American South, and First Amendment freedoms of speech and expression.

While president of the Bank of Kingston (Madison County) in 1981-1982, he, Jim McDougal, and Jim Guy Tucker made real estate investments which later came under scrutiny during the Whitewater investigation headed by Kenneth Starr. Smith pled guilty to one misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to misapply loan proceeds. In response to what he considered to be inaccurate stories published in the The Washington Times, he filed defamation suits against the newspaper, its parent company, and two of its employees, Jerry Seper and Wesley Pruden. He also filed a similar suit against Starr. His experience with Whitewater led to his writing a novel, The Star Chamber (1998). He was pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.

Smith remained at the University of Arkansas until his retirement in 2015. In recognition of his continued service, he received the chairman’s award from the Washington County Democratic Party in 2017.