Charles C. Beckett

Born in 1912 in Philadelphia, Beckett graduated with a BA in sociology from Wilberforce University in 1934. After his graduation from the Yale Divinity School in 1938, he pursued further study at the Columbia University School of Social Work and the University of Pennsylvania. Beckett’s obituary in the Philadelphia Daily News said that he traced his lineage to the Reverend Anthony Campbell, who was licensed as a minister in 1787 in Philadelphia. Beckett’s great-grandfather was the eighth bishop of the AME Church and his great-grandmother was the founder of the Women’s Mite Missionary Society of the AME Church.

Beckett, an ordained AME minister, served churches in New Haven and Hamilton, Ohio. In 1950, he returned to his hometown of Philadelphia, where he was pastor at the AME Union and Trinity AME churches. He was also appointed to positions in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban League, the USO, and other governmental and community organizations. Beckett died in 1987.