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Revision as of 22:49, 14 April 2007 by Athaenara (talk | contribs) (missed a comma)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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.
Vernon Johns is considered 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 Prince Edward County, Virginia in Darlington Heights. He died of a heart attack in Washington, D. C. in 1965.
Movie
A television film was made in 1994 called Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story, written by Leslie Lee and Kevin Arkadie, and based on an unpublished biography by Henry W. Powell of The Vernon Johns Society. The motion picture was directed by Kenneth Fink and starred James Earl Jones in the title role. Former NBA super-star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an African-American history buff, was the film's co-executive producer.
References
- Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. ISBN 0-671-68742-5.
See also
- Ralph Luker, editor of the Vernon Johns Papers.
External links
- Vernon Johns biography at The Vernon Johns Society
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church History: Rev. Vernon Johns 1947-1952 The Church's Nineteenth Pastor
- Bio @ Oberlin College
- The Vernon Johns Story at IMDb
- Documenting Vernon Johns
- Vernon Johns at Find-A-Grave
- Johns the Baptist
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