In addition to her roles as an educator, a philanthropist, and a guardian of black cultural heritage, Mary Perry Smith was a co-founder of Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

Smith was born in Evansville, Indiana on May 29, 1926 where Smith's father was a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. As the location of his ministry changed, the family moved to several small towns in Indiana including Logansport, Anderson, Crawfordsville, and Frankfort. Smith's father was also an educator and school principal and continually emphasized the importance of education and black history to his family.

Following the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, several of Smith's grandparents attended historically black colleges, as did many of her other relatives. These included Tuskegee, the Hampton Institute, Florida A&M, Atlanta University, Howard University, Spelman, and Morehouse. Hearing and learning about her grandparents' experiences under slavery and their successes and setbacks following the proclamation instilled in Smith a strong racial consciousness, but also the knowledge that her own abilities were limited by neither her race nor gender.

Smith attended Ball State on a freshman year scholarship where she majored in math and science. She then went on to complete her masters at Purdue University in 1948. Upon obtaining her degree, Smith moved to Houston to teach at Texas Southern University where she met and married her husband, Norvel Smith. They later moved to San Francisco to attend graduate school at Caltech where Smith pursued, but did not complete, a doctorate in educational psychology. This was due to her increased involvement in teaching junior high math and science in the San Francisco School District from 1953 to 1961 and then teaching geometry and arithmetic at Oakland Tech High School from 1961 to 1978. Noticing that few of her students went on to attend college, even though the University of California Berkley was located less than five miles from the high school, Smith was inspired to co-found the Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement program (MESA) in 1969. As the program grew, Smith switched to working full-time for MESA in 1978 at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

When the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened in 1969, both Norvel and Mary Perry Smith became actively involved. Mary participated in the Black History Committee of the Culture and Ethnic Affairs Guild that was formed in 1970 under the oversight of Ben Hazard, the museum's curator of special exhibits and education. Some of the earliest programming presented by the guild included the Soul Vibrations Festival, first held in November 1970, and an annual series dedicated to black pioneers in the Bay Area. The 1972 program honored the first black pioneers to migrate to the Bay Area while the 1973 program honored seven black scientists.

Continuing this series of programing, in 1974 the guild honored the black filmmakers of the '20s through the '50s. The program was presented under the moniker of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and put together by Sonny Buxton (Community Services Director of KGO-TV), Roy Thomas (lecturer in Afro-American Studies at the University of California-Berkley), and Mary Perry Smith in her role as co-chairperson of the Culture and Ethnic Affairs Guild. The first film lecture series and Oscar Michaeux Awards Ceremony were an amazing success. In addition to being celebrated by the local Oakland community, black filmmakers, and the black community at large, the BFHF garnered accolades from the California House and Senate. This inspired the OMCA to transform and expand the awards ceremony into an annual Black History Month celebration. The events included the film lecture series hosted by the museum from January up until the weekend of the awards ceremony, a film symposium hosted by UC Berkley, a film competition, a celebrity dinner and dance gala, a sidewalk reception, and the awards ceremony. The BFHF identified itself as an organization "dedicated to influencing Black images portrayed in film and television through education, the nurturing of current independent filmmakers and the preservation of contributions by Black artists" (BFHFI 20th Anniversary Celebration Program).

A large-scale volunteer effort, the BFHF soon outgrew the resources and energy of the staff at the museum and so became a separate, incorporated non-profit organization in 1978. In addition to the celebration events in January and February, the now BFHFI also sponsored and hosted master classes, workshops, film screenings, and other educational events throughout the year. 1990 marked the start of Black Filmworks, a film festival designed to showcase the winning submissions to the annual film competition. Hoping to start its own brick and mortar museum, the BFHFI also acquired memorabilia and artifacts from a number of celebrities including Ruby Dee, the Nicholas Brothers, Sidney Poitier, and Phil Moore (note that due to their volume, Moore's materials are represented as a separate collection for descriptive purposes, but are officially part of the BFHFI Archives). Inductees and awardees included celebrities and notable filmmakers such as Paul Robeson, Stepin Fetchit, Gordon Parks, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diahann Carol, Dizzy Gillespie, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belefonte, Julie Dash, Spike Lee, Brock Peters, Maya Angelou, Tempestt Bledsoe, Jim Brown, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Richard Pryor, and many others.

Although financial instability prevented the museum from becoming a reality and led to the end of the annual celebration in 1993, the BFHFI continued to host Black Filmworks and a number of smaller events until 2003. From then on, most of its activities were focused on fundraising events and planning meetings aimed at revitalizing the organization. During its entire existence, the BFHFI had one full-time staff position, although it did hire a number of hourly employees and was supported by hundreds of volunteers over the years.

Smith played a number of leading and energetic roles in the organization, which included the following:

Previous board presidents included Margot Hicks Sudduth (1977-1978), the Honorable Benjamin Travis (1978-1979), Vincent Tubbs (1979-1980), and James O. Cole (1980-1983). Those following Smith included Terrence Johnson (1996?-2002), Frank Smith, Jr. (2002-?).

Smith's tireless efforts greatly influenced the shape and direction of the BFHFI, and her careful stewardship of the collection has helped ensure that this and future generations will have access to this invaluable documentation on black filmmaking in the last quarter of the 20th century.