Vernon Johns (April 22, 1892 – June 11, 1965) was an American minister and civil rights leader who was active in the struggle for civil rights for African Americans from the 1920s.
He is considered by some as the father of the American Civil Rights Movement, having laid the foundation on which Martin Luther King, Jr. and others would build. He was Dr. King's predecessor as pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama from 1947 to 1952, and a mentor of Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker, and many others in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Prince Edward County, Virginia, the grandson of slaves. He graduated from Oberlin Seminary in 1918 and attended the University of Chicago's graduate school of theology. He died of a heart attack in Washington, D.C. on June 11, 1965 at age 73. David Anderson Elementary School in Petersburg, Virginia, was renamed 'Vernon Johns Middle School' several years ago. In 2009 it became the junior high school for the city school system.
Read more about Vernon Johns: Family Legacy, Television Movie
Famous quotes containing the word johns:
“I think every woman’s entitled to a middle husband she can forget.”
—Adela Rogers St. Johns (b. 1893)