Determined to finish his education after having had to leave school to help support his family after his father's death, Hope went North: graduating from Worcester Academy and Brown University. He returned to the South to teach, and in 1906 became the first African American president of Atlanta Baptist College. He served as president until his death in 1936. After the college's affiliation with Atlanta University, Hope was selected in 1929 as the university's first African-American president; he worked to develop that institution's graduate programs to ensure higher education for Blacks.
John Hope was born in 1868 in Augusta, Georgia, the son of James Hope, a white Scots-American merchant, and Mary Frances Taylor, a free woman of color. Her mother was part of the class of free people of color well before the Civil War.[1] The senior Hope was born in Langholm, Scotland in 1805, and migrated with his parents at age 12 to New York City in 1817. As a young man, he established a successful grocery business in Manhattan.
In 1831, the senior Hope moved south to Augusta, Georgia, where he became a successful businessman. He later formed a relationship with Mary Frances Taylor. State law prohibited interracial marriage, but they lived openly as a couple to the end of his life and had a family.[1] Of majority European ancestry, their son John Hope was European in appearance and could have passed for white. But, he identified with the African American community and devoted his life to its education and advancement in the postwar segregated South.
Hope was eight when his father died, and his family struggled financially; the executors failed to carry out his father's plans for support of him and his mother. The youth left school after eighth grade to work, but five years later John Hope was determined to get educated. He managed to go north for his education, graduating from Worcester Academy in 1890. He went on to Brown University, graduating in 1894. Hope was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.[1]
A few years after Hope got established, on December 29, 1897 he married the former Lugenia D. Burns of Nashville.[2] They had children. Lugenia Burns Hope became a well-known social reformer.[2]
Hope joined W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, northern activists, as founders of the Niagara Movement to work for civil rights for Blacks. He was also active in the succeeding organization, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, and became considered a national race leader. He supported full civil rights for Blacks and promoted college education, becoming known for that as Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute was known for vocation education.[1] Hope and Du Bois both agreed that Blacks must have the chance for full academic education to develop leaders for their people.
Hope continued as president of Morehouse College until his death in 1936. In 1928, Morehouse and Spelman College, a college for women, became affiliated with Atlanta University, also a historically Black college. In 1929 Hope was selected as Atlanta University's first African-American president. He concentrated on building the university's graduate studies to ensure high-achieving Black scholars a place in academia. He inspired generations of scholars and activists.[1] During his presidency, Atlanta University launched a graduate school, established their Department of Fine Arts, and opened the Trevor Arnett Library.[3]
^Williams, Sonja D. (2015). Word Warrior. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 185. ISBN978-0252081392.
^Wesley, Dr. Charles H. (1981) [1928]. "The Widening Social Program". The History of Alpha Phi Alpha, A Development in College Life. Foundation. p. 224. ASINB000ESQ14W.
