John Hurst Adams

Last updated
Bishop
John Hurst Adams
Born(1927-11-27)November 27, 1927
DiedJanuary 10, 2018(2018-01-10) (aged 90)
NationalityAmerican
Education
OccupationPastor
Years active1956-2005

John Hurst Adams (November 27, 1927 - January 10, 2018) was an American civil rights activist and Bishop in African Methodist Episcopal Church. He also served as a college president.

Contents

Early life and education

Adams was born on November 27, 1927, in Columbia, South Carolina. [1] [2] His father, Eugene Adams, was a reverend in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a civil rights activist active in Columbia's Black community. [2] Adams attended Booker T. Washington High School, graduating in 1947, and earned a Bachelor's in History from Johnson C. Smith University several years later. [2] Adams completed his postgraduate education at the Boston University School of Theology, where he met Martin Luther King Jr. He also briefly attended Harvard University and Union Theological Seminary. [2]

Career

In 1956, Adams was made president of Paul Quinn College, a position he held for six years. [3] While president of the college, Adams lived in Waco and quickly became a target of the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Waco was where Adams began his civil rights activism in earnest. He supported students in their protest efforts and engaged in them himself, participating in sit-ins and marching on picket lines. [4] Despite being re-appointed as president, in 1962 he moved to Seattle, accepting a position as lead pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church. [5] [2] While serving in that role, Adams acted as chairman of the Central Area Civil Rights Committee, a group dedicated to promoting civil rights in Seattle. [2] In that role, he advocated for an open housing ordinance to ban housing discrimination in the city. Seattle City Council ultimately recommended the policy be voted on by the people, where it lost by a two-to-one margin. [6] [7] He also helped found the Central Area Motivation Program, the first government agency explicitly created as part of Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty. [2] [8]

In 1968 Adams was transferred to a church in Los Angeles where he served for four years. In 1972, he was named Bishop of the Tenth Episcopal District in Texas. [9] [10] While there, Adams returned to Paul Quinn College to serve as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. [11] In 1980 Adams became Bishop of the Second Episcopal District in Washington, D.C. [2] He founded the Congress of National Black Churches, a coalition of historically African-American denominations, in 1982 and acted as its first chairman. [12] The organization had a collective membership of seventeen million members across seven denominations. [13] In D.C. he renewed his activism, protesting Ronald Reagan's military budget and organizing voter registration drives across the country. [14] [15]

Adams (left) praying with Bill Clinton in 1996 President Bill Clinton Prays with Bishop John Hurst Adams and Pastor Terrence Mackey an Mount Zion A.M.E. Church.jpg
Adams (left) praying with Bill Clinton in 1996

In 1988 he began serving as Bishop for the Sixth Episcopal District, in Georgia. [2] [16] He was a heavy critic of Ralph Abernathy's 1989 book And the Walls Came Tumbling Down , which made controversial claims about Martin Luther King Jr.'s private life. [17] [18] In 1992 Adams was named Bishop of the Tenth Episcopal District in South Carolina. [2] [19] The following year, he was ranked alongside Jesse Jackson as one of the top Black preachers in the United States by Ebony and advocated against Bill Clinton's endorsement of Chuck Robb in his Senate campaign. [20] [21] In 1994, he began speaking out against the South Carolina State House's flying of the Confederate battle flag, working with the NAACP and Christian interdenominational groups to organize a protest at the State House against the flag. [22] [23] On the subject of the flag, Adams said that it "says the same thing to me that the swastika says to my Jewish brothers." [24] The group accepted a compromise which would move the flag from the dome of the capitol to a less visible place, however, the compromise did not go into effect. [25] Adams continued his activism through the end of his of time in South Carolina. [26]

Adam's final placement as Bishop was made in 2000, when he transferred to the Eleventh Episcopal District in Florida. [2] [27] He retired in 2005 and returned to his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. [2]

Later life and death

Adams and his wife had three children. [9] After his retirement, Adams became a professor at Emory University. [2] He died on January 10, 2018, in Atlanta. [1] His grandson Malcolm Brogdon is a professional basketball player for the Portland Trail Blazers. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Methodist Episcopal Church</span> Predominantly African American Protestant denomination

The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Methodist denomination based in the United States. It adheres to Wesleyan–Arminian theology and has a connexional polity. It cooperates with other Methodist bodies through the World Methodist Council and Wesleyan Holiness Connection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church</span> Predominantly African-American Christian denomination

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) is a historically African-American Christian denomination based in the United States. It was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Paul Quinn</span> American bishop

William Paul Quinn was born in India and immigrated to the United States, where he became the fourth bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States when founded in 1816 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Quinn College</span> Historically black Methodist college in Dallas, Texas

Paul Quinn College (PQC) is a private historically black Methodist college in Dallas, Texas. The college is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). It is the oldest historically black college west of the Mississippi River and the nation's first urban work college.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard H. Cain</span> American politician

Richard Harvey Cain was an American minister, abolitionist, and United States Representative from South Carolina from 1873 to 1875 and 1877 to 1879. After the American Civil War, he was appointed by Bishop Daniel Payne as a missionary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. He also was one of the founders of Lincolnville, South Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black church</span> Christian congregations in the U.S. that minister predominantly to African Americans

The black church is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are also led by African Americans, as well as these churches' collective traditions and members. The term "black church" may also refer to individual congregations, including in traditionally white-led denominations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vashti Murphy McKenzie</span> Former AME bishop

Vashti Murphy McKenzie is the President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. She is also a retired bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and author of six books. In 2000, McKenzie became the first woman to be elected as bishop in the denomination's history. She later served as President of the Council of Bishops, becoming the first woman to serve as Titular head of the AME Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Payne</span> Methodist bishop and educator (1811–1893)

Daniel Alexander Payne was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. A major shaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Payne stressed education and preparation of ministers and introduced more order in the church, becoming its sixth bishop and serving for more than four decades (1852–1893) as well as becoming one of the founders of Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856. In 1863, the AME Church bought the college and chose Payne to lead it; he became the first African-American president of a college in the United States and served in that position until 1877.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allen Temple AME Church (Cincinnati, Ohio)</span> Church in Ohio, US

The Allen Temple AME Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, US, is the mother church of the Third Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Founded in 1824, it is the oldest operating black church in Cincinnati and the largest church of the Third Episcopal District of the AME Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry McNeal Turner</span> American minister, politician, and newspaper publisher

Henry McNeal Turner was an American minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). After the American Civil War, he worked to establish new A.M.E. congregations among African Americans in Georgia. Born free in South Carolina, Turner learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher. He joined the AME Church in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1858, where he became a minister. Founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early 19th century, the A.M.E. Church was the first independent black denomination in the United States. Later Turner had pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris Brown</span>

Morris Brown was one of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and its second presiding bishop. He founded Emanuel AME Church in his native Charleston, South Carolina. It was implicated in the slave uprising planned by Denmark Vesey, also of this church, and after that was suppressed, Brown was imprisoned for nearly a year. He was never convicted of a crime.

John Adams Sr. was an American minister, lawyer, and politician and a member of the unicameral Nebraska Legislature. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, was a lawyer and minister in South Carolina, Washington state, and Colorado before settling in Omaha, Nebraska. While in South Carolina he took a civil rights case to the U.S. Supreme Court where he lost. He was the only black member of the Nebraska unicameral for much of his tenure from 1949 to 1962. He was an ordained minister and at the time of his death was presiding elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). As a legislator, he was an outspoken champion of civil rights and fought for fair employment practices and pensions for retired teachers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Walker Hood</span> American bishop and abolitionist

James Walker Hood was an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church bishop in North Carolina from 1872 to 1916. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he moved to New York and became active in the AME Zion church. Well before the Emancipation Proclamation, he was an active abolitionist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac M. Burgan</span>

Isaac M. Burgan was born a slave October 6, 1848 in McDowell County, North Carolina near Marion to a slave, Sylva Burgan. Held in slavery until the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865), Burgan first learned to read from reviewing the homework of white children on the farm. Burgan was regarded as too smart to make a good slave, but his owner valued Burgan's intelligence and refused to sell him as a child. However, the relationship between master and slave was not always positive. When once his mother was being whipped, Burgan struck the man whipping Sylva with a poker, stopping the whipping. Burgan fled, but when he returned was himself whipped. He then was hired out, eventually taking work in Tennessee where he began to attend school when he had spare time from his work on the railroads.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John M. Brown</span> African-American bishop

John Mifflin Brown was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. He was a leader in the Underground Railroad. He helped open a number of churches and schools, including the Payne Institute which became Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, and Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. He was also an early principal of Union Seminary which became Wilberforce University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carrie Thomas Jordan</span> American educator and civil rights activist

Carrie Thomas Jordan was an American educator and civil rights activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie L. Clinton</span>

Marie Louise Clay Clinton was an American educator, singer, and church leader. She was the founder and superintendent of the Buds of Promise Juvenile Mission Society, under the Women's Home and Overseas Missionary Society (WH&OMS) of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pauline Sims Puryear</span> American clubwoman

Pauline J. Sims Puryear was an American social worker and clubwoman, the fourth international president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and Dean of Women at Florida A&M State College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Singleton T. Jones</span> 19th century African Methodist religious leader

Bishop Singleton T. Jones was a religious leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Although he had little education, Jones taught himself to be an articulate orator and was awarded the position of bishop within the church. Besides being a pastor to churches, he also edited AME Zion publications, the Zion's Standard and Weekly Review and the Discipline.

Rev. John E. Price was an elder and minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He was a minister for around 50 years. He was the founder and president of the Garnet Equal Rights League at Harrisburg. He wrote hymns and was an editor for the Zion Church Advocate and, with William H. Day, the Zion Church Herald and Outlook, the first paper of the AME Zion Church. Day was a minister, abolitionist, and educator.

References

  1. 1 2 "Adams, John Hurst". The Atlanta Constitution . Atlanta, Georgia. 2018-01-16. p. B4. Retrieved 2023-02-26– via Newspapers.com.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Henry, Mary T. (2007-02-22). "Adams, Bishop John Hurst (1927-2018)". HistoryLink . Retrieved 2023-02-25.
  3. ↑ "Texas News Briefs". The Daily Journal. 1956-06-27. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-05-09– via Newspapers.com.
  4. 1 2 Putz, Paul (2020-06-08). "John Hurts Adams, Church Leader and Civil Rights Icon - And Also Malcom Brogdon's Grandfather". Faith & Sports. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
  5. ↑ "Paul Quinn Re-Appoints Dr. Adams". The Waco News-Tribune. 1962-09-02. p. 25. Retrieved 2023-05-09– via Newspapers.com.
  6. ↑ "Seattle City Council ducks housing issue". Port Angeles Evening News. Associated Press. 1963-10-26. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-05-09– via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ "History of the Seattle Open Housing Campaign, 1959-1968". BlackPast . 2007-04-09. Retrieved 2023-05-09.
  8. ↑ Henry, Mary T. (2009-12-13). "CAMP: Central Area Motivation Program (Seattle)". HistoryLink . Retrieved 2023-02-25.
  9. 1 2 Adams, Chelsea (2011-06-23). "John H. Adams (1927- )". BlackPast.org . Retrieved 2023-04-26.
  10. ↑ "Church sessions underway here". Brownwood Bulletin. 1972-09-26. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-05-09– via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ "Paul Quinn College Trustees Elect President". The Waco Citizen. 1977-04-19. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ Raspberry, William (1982-12-23). "A Fair Share?". Daily Press. p. 5. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Brown, Tony (1982-03-13). "Black Church: History of Liberation". The Atlanta Voice . p. 5. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ "Clergy group raps 'selfish' Reagan budget". The San Francisco Examiner . United Press International. 1983-03-08. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  15. ↑ White, Cecile Holmes (1983-06-25). "Church Seeks To Register Black Voters". Greensboro Daily News. p. 24. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  16. ↑ Bellinger, Mary A. (1988-07-16). "Rev. Dr. John Hurst Adams New A.M.E. Bishop to GA". The Atlanta Voice. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  17. ↑ Jubera, Drew; Durcanin, Cynthia (1989-10-13). "Abernathy Book Called 'Criminally Irresponsible'". The Atlanta Constitution. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  18. ↑ "Book on Martin Luther King Jr.'s life criticized". Press and Sun-Bulletin. 1989-10-13. p. 6. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  19. ↑ White, Gayle (1992-07-17). "Atlanta bishop of AME church to be transferred". The Atlanta Constitution. p. 53. Retrieved 2023-05-11– via Newspapers.com.
  20. ↑ Graham, Jennifer (1993-11-05). "'Application of gospel' helps AME bishop make Ebony's top 15 preachers". The State. p. 16. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
  21. ↑ Schapiro, Jeff E. (1993-08-20). "Black group demands that Clinton not back Robb". Richmond Times-Dispatch. p. 5. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
  22. ↑ "NAACP considers actions on flag issue". The Herald. Associated Press. 1994-06-27. p. 6. Retrieved 2023-05-13– via Newspapers.com.
  23. ↑ "Hundreds rally at Statehouse to battle for removal of flag". The Herald. Associated Press. 1994-03-27. p. 10. Retrieved 2023-05-13– via Newspapers.com.
  24. ↑ "Rebel flag conflicts rises in South". The Parsons Sun. Associated Press. 1994-07-25. p. 7. Retrieved 2023-05-13– via Newspapers.com.
  25. ↑ "Battle flag debate comes back to life". The Index-Journal. Associated Press. 1995-03-17. p. 17. Retrieved 2023-05-13– via Newspapers.com.
  26. ↑ Morantz, Dave (1998-12-10). "Black ministers march to Statehouse to protest flying of Confederate flag". The Times and Democrat. p. 17. Retrieved 2023-05-13– via Newspapers.com.
  27. ↑ Hogan, Barbara (2000-08-19). "New AME bishop visits district". Tallahassee Democrat. p. 23. Retrieved 2023-05-13– via Newspapers.com.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.