21 Facts About Alexander Walters

Bishop Alexander Walters was an American clergyman and civil rights leader.

Alexander Walters was educated at a private school taught by a number of teachers.

Alexander Walters was valedictorian of his high school class in 1875.

Alexander Walters started out as a circuit minister, first serving the Corydon Circuit and then in 1881 the Cloverport Circuit where he founded five new churches.

Alexander Walters then served pastorates in Indianapolis, Louisville, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, Tennessee, before his assignment to Mother Zion Church in New York City in 1888.

In 1889, Alexander Walters was selected to represent the Zion Church in London at the World's Sunday School Convention, and went on to visit other parts of Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land.

Alexander Walters immediately endorsed the League, which met in early 1890 in Knoxville, but went defunct by 1893.

In March 1898, alarmed by an upsurge in violent lynchings of African Americans across the country, Alexander Walters asked Fortune to publish a nationwide appeal for a meeting of African-American leaders.

Alexander Walters was elected the first president, while Fortune became the first chairman of the executive committee.

At the meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1902, Alexander Walters stepped aside to become chairman of the executive committee, and Fortune was promoted to president.

Alexander Walters bided his time, regaining the presidency in Detroit in 1905, after issuing an appeal to old members to return.

Alexander Walters was reelected at New York and Baltimore, but the Council, now under the control of militant members of the Niagara Movement, gradually lost its cohesiveness and stability.

Alexander Walters' prominence had grown to such a level that on January 10,1916, he met with President Woodrow Wilson at the White House to discuss how best to obtain the confirmation of African-Americans nominated for federal office by Wilson.

In 1908, Walters refused an offer by W E B Du Bois to merge the council with the Niagara Movement and two other organizations.

Alexander Walters angered many black followers by endorsing Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1908.

The council soon dissolved, but Alexander Walters wasted little time seeking a new power base, emerging as president of the new National Independent Political League.

Alexander Walters traveled abroad frequently, including frequent trips to London, where he attended the First Pan-African Conference in 1900, and becoming President of the Pan-African Association, and visited West Africa in 1910 and the Caribbean in 1911.

Alexander Walters died on February 2,1917, in New York City, of natural causes.

Alexander Walters was survived by his third wife, Lelia Coleman Walters.

The couple's son, Hillis Alexander Walters, was an actor during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s and, later, a composer.

Bishop Alexander Walters is buried in Brooklyn, New York, in Mother Zion's Cypress Hills Cemetery.