Vernon Johns

Vernon Napoleon Johns was born on the twenty-second of April 1892 at Darlington Heights, near Farmville in Prince Edward County, Virginia. He was the son of Willie Johns — a farmer, peddler, and Baptist preacher — and Sallie Branch Price Johns. From that rural Virginia soil rose a mind of rare hunger: as a young man Johns taught himself Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and German, and could recite whole books of Scripture, including the Epistle to the Romans in its entirety.

He trained at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, graduating in 1915, and went on to study at Oberlin and at the University of Chicago's divinity school. Across the decades he preached, farmed, and taught, becoming in 1926 the first African American whose work was included in the anthology Best Sermons of the Year. He wedded the labor of the field to the labor of the pulpit, and refused to let the two be strangers.

In 1947 Johns became the nineteenth pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, serving until 1952. There his fearless sermons — among them the notorious "It Is Safe to Kill Negroes in Montgomery" — kindled a spirit of resistance years before it had a name. His boldness prepared that congregation for the young minister who would follow him: Martin Luther King Jr., who called Johns "a brilliant preacher with a creative mind" and "a fearless man."

He died on the eleventh of June 1965 in Washington, D.C. Often called a father of the civil rights movement, Vernon Johns spoke plainly against injustice when silence was safer, and lit a fire others would carry to victory. May his courage be honored, and his voice never forgotten.