Vernon Napoleon Johns was an American minister and civil rights activist. Johns was best known as the predecessor to Martin Luther King Jr. as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1948–1953. Johns
Vernon Napoleon Johns was an American minister and civil rights activist. Johns was best known as the predecessor to Martin Luther King Jr. as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1948–1953. Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Prince Edward County, Virginia, on April 22, 1892, to Willie Johns, a farmer, peddler, and Baptist preacher, and Sallie Branch Price Johns.
Johns worked on the farm, growing up and was a voracious reader of western classical thought. He graduated from the Boydton Academic and Bible Institute, and Virginia Theological Seminary and College in 1915 and then attended Oberlin Seminary. While at Oberlin, Johns, who was highly respected by his fellow students and the faculty, was chosen to give the annual student oration. After graduating from Oberlin in 1918, Johns attended the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Theology. After studying there, he moved to various congregations in Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. In 1926 he became the first African American to have his work published in Best Sermons of the Year.
In 1927 Johns married Altona Trent, a pianist and music teacher who became a professor at what is now Alabama State University. The couple would later have six children, three sons and three daughters.
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