Vernon Johns
Born: April 22, 1892 (Darlington Heights, VA)
Died: June 11, 1965 (Washington, D.C.)
Biography
Vernon Johns was an American minister based in the South and a pioneer in the civil rights movement. Johns was widely known in the black community across the South for his profound scholarship in the classics, his intellect, and his highly controversial and outspoken sermons on race relations, which were ahead of his time.
Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in 1892. He graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary and College in 1915 and earned a BD from Oberlin College three years later. He is best known as the pastor (1947–52) of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. There, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. succeeded him in 1952. Prior to his pastorship at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Johns pastored churches in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
