Cordie Rose Smith Hines was born in Austin, Texas August 2, 1926 to the union of Lizzie T. and Connie Smith. Her mother would later marry George Lee Lightfoot and they would both raise Cordie and her brother Lemuel in Amarillo, TX. Cordie attended Patton High School, where she later graduated. After high school she married Herman Alvin Hines, having two daughters, Rosalind Odette and Alison.
She was a member of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Amarillo, where she was in the senior choir and also youth choir director. She was a Girl Scout Leader in Amarillo’s North Heights community. She became a Roman Catholic in 1994, becoming a devoted member of the St. Rita Church Community in Dallas, Texas.
As a wife and mother in Amarillo, she worked as a library page, clerk and book-mobile driver for the City of Amarillo’s Mary E. Bivins Library. She would later become the first African American to become the library’s mobile unit supervisor. She would later attend Amarillo Junior College. While still working at the library, she attended West Texas State University, in Canyon, TX, where she graduated in 1966 with a B.A. Degree. Subsequently, the City of Amarillo assigned her to open and be the director of the newly built Southwest Branch Library, becoming the first African American to assume an administrative position with that city’s library division. While still working in her director’s role in Amarillo, Cordie began commuting weekly from Amarillo to Denton, Texas to study library science at TWU where she graduated in 1970 with a Master’s Degree in Library Science.
Although, she was still directing the South- west Branch Library in Amarillo, the City of Dallas (immediately following her MA graduation), recruited Cordie to manage the Cross-roads Community Center Branch Library (later re-named the Martin Luther King Jr. Library).
She managed that branch two years before she was promoted to the Assistant Chief of all branch libraries in Dallas (becoming the first African American in an administrative position for the city’s library division). She became Zone Director of all libraries in the North Dallas district and retired from the Dallas Public Library in 1982.
She was an active member of the Delta Sigma The- ta Sorority – Dallas Alumnae Chapter and the NAACP. Cordie was also a member of the Friends of the Library; American Library Association; Southwestern Library Association; Texas Library Association and the Dallas County Library Association.
She served on the boards for the Lone Star Council of Camp Fire; Girls Adventure Trails; Dallas Metropolitan Business and Professional Women’s Club; Metropolitan YWCA; Literacy of America Volunteers; Dallas Post Tribune Newspaper; Dallas (Tejas) Girl Scouts; Dallas Day Care Association; the Dallas Urban League and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
She received the City of Dallas Commitment to Excellence Award; United Way of Metropolitan Dallas Campaign Award; the Dallas Public Library Association Distinguished Service Award; DISD Volunteer Award; Dallas Metropolitan Business and Professional Women’s Award and Texas Association of Culture Community Services Award.
