Alexander Joseph Allen

Born in 1884 in Columbus, Georgia, Alexander Joseph Allen, Sr. had deep family roots in the AME Church. He received his BA from Clark College in 1910 and was licensed to preach the following year. From 1912 to 1914, he studied at the Yale Divinity School. In 1915, he was ordained as a deacon in Boston and, in 1917, as an elder in Newport Rhode Island.

In 1915, Allen married Jewett Washington of Montgomery, Alabama, and they had four sons, including Alexander Joseph Allen, Jr., who graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1940. Allen’s brother, Nimrod Allen, graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1915.

Allen served as a pastor of churches in Boston and Northampton, Massachusetts; Jamestown, Rhode Island; Connellsville, Pennsylvania; and Columbus, Portsmouth, and Dayton, Ohio. In 1931, he became the divisional secretary of the American Bible Society.

In 1940, Allen was elected bishop of the AME Church for the 16th Episcopal District. In 1948, he was appointed to the third district, and, in 1956, to the fourth district. He served as chancellor and chair of the board of trustees of Wilberforce University and on the board of Payne Theological Seminary (associated with Wilberforce).

The recipient of many honorary doctorates of divinity, Allen was a member of the Women’s Missionary Board of the AME Church; a delegate to the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (held in 1958 in Amsterdam); a delegate to the World Council of Methodism (held in 1951 in Oxford, England); and a delegate to the Third Faith and Order Assembly (held in 1952 in Lund, Sweden). He was a Mason and a member of the NAACP, Frontiers of America, Knights of Pythias, and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. Allen died in Cleveland in 1956. helpful work in the selection of appropriate sites for the war housing projects; his cooperation with groups fighting to maintain the democratic policy at the Western Electric Company; for sponsorship of the Hold-Your-Job campaign; and for giving his time as instructor at War Vocational School No. 453.

Allen later worked for the AME Church and, from 1964 to 1966, he served as director of the New York Urban League. He then served, from 1966-1979, as director of the Eastern Regional Office of the National Urban League. In 1979, he was named vice president of the National Urban League. Allen had three children with his wife Elizabeth. He died in Jamaica, Queens, in 1984.