Born in Los Angeles, CA, Shirlee is the second of Bernice and Eugene Pickett's four children. Bernice was a domestic and sometimes a "live-in"; Eugene was a waiter on the Southern Pacific Railroad and sometimes a waiter in fashionable Los Angeles restaurants. Early years were on the west side of Los Angeles, she attended the 37th Street Elementary School.[1]
The family then moved to Boyle Heights, to the home of Lily Pickett, the fraternal grandmother. Here, Shirlee attended sixth grade at First Street School. Next was Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School, where Shirlee and sister Beverlee were two of only four African American students at the school. Shirlee graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1954.[citation needed]
She attended Los Angeles City College where she majored in accounting and met her first husband. The marriage fell apart after the birth of their second daughter, she moved back home with her mom, who quickly found Shirlee a small house of her own to rent.[citation needed]
Shirlee applied for welfare, then married her second husband and had four more children. Her second child died in 1959, at the age of two, due to sickle cell disease. Her fourth child, her only son, died in 1983 as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident.[1] The couple separated when Smith was 30.[1] Smith has fostered "a dozen" infants.[2]
She enrolled at Pasadena City College, then graduated from UCLA.[3]