Born on May 17th, 1934, Bertha L. Smoot grew up with her mother, father, and two older brothers in Sampson County, North Carolina. Throughout her upbringing she spent time in several towns in Sampson and Wayne counties. Her father was a sharecropper farmer, and her mother worked in the home. In the fall of 1953, after graduating from high school, Mrs. Smoot moved in with her cousin in Washington, D.C., and began studying at Howard University. Soon after graduating from Howard, Mrs. Smoot got a job as a correctional officer at the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia. Mrs. Smoot met her husband, who was from West Virginia, while working in Alderson and soon moved back to the District to live with him. Upon returning to Washington in 1959, Mrs. Smoot got a job as a police officer and worked in the Women’s Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Department until 1967 when she transferred to the Department of Social Services. Mrs. Smoot later moved to the Office of the Inspector General and returned to investigations.