April 22, 1892
Fiery civil rights pioneer Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in Prince Edward County. He taught himself German and other languages so well that when the dean of Oberlin College handed him a book of German scripture, Johns easily passed, won admission and became the top student at Oberlin College.
In 1948, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, hired Johns, who mesmerized the crowd with his photographic memory of scripture. But he butted heads with the middle-class congregation when he chastised members for disliking muddy manual labor, selling cabbages, hams and watermelons on the streets near the state capitol.
He pressed civil rights issues, helping Black rape victims bring their cases to authorities, ordering a meal from a white restaurant and refusing to sit in the back of a bus. “If you see a good fight,” Johns was fond of saying, “get in it.”
After a series of Black men were killed by white police officers in Alabama, all ruled justifiable homicide, Johns delivered a sermon on the subject: “Last week, a white man was fined for shooting a rabbit out of season. But of course, it’s safe to murder Negroes. A rabbit is better off than a Negro because in Alabama ‘n—–s’ are always in season.”
He urged the congregation to stand up against these injustices: “When you stand by and watch your brothers and sisters being lynched it’s as if you stood by while Christ was crucified.”
Few followed his lead, and turmoil continued to rise between the pastor and his parishioners. In May 1953, he resigned, returning to his family farm. His successor? A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr.
James Earl Jones portrayed the eccentric pastor in the 1994 TV film, “Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story,” and historian Taylor Branch profiled Johns in his Pulitzer-winning “Parting the Waters; America in the King Years 1954-63.”
