Vernon Johns

Rev. Dr. Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights on 22 April 1892. A graduate of Oberlin College, he became an orator of great renown and the first African-American minister included in Best Sermons of the Year in 1926, an international publication. He served as pastor of Court Street Baptist Church in Lynchburg from 1920 to 1926 and again from 1941 to 1943, and as president of Virginia Theological Seminary and College there from 1929 to 1934. Later he was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1948 to 1952. A blunt-spoken opponent of racial segregation and a champion of civil rights, he urged his congregations to resist the laws that constricted their lives. He died in Washington, D.C., on 10 June 1965 and is buried just north of Darlington Heights.

Virginia · United States