William Yancy Bell

Born in 1887, the son of a minister and the grandson of an enslaved man who escaped with his family from slavery in North Carolina, William Yancey (or Yancy) Bell received his BA from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee in 1907, a master's degree from Northwestern University in 1915, and an S.B.T. from Garrett Biblical Institute, where he taught classical languages following his graduation.

Bell served as an army chaplain during World War I. In 1919, he founded a Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (Williams Institutional) in New York, where he stayed for nine years. In 1924, he completed his PhD in New Testament Studies from Yale. His dissertation was entitled, “Mutawakkili of As-Suyuti,” a translation of an Arabic text.

In 1928, Bell joined the faculty of Gammon Theological Seminary and later taught Biblical studies at Morris Brown and Howard. In 1938, he was made a bishop of the CME Church. He served on the faculty of the CME Church’s Holsey Institute in Cordele, Georgia from 1941 to 1948. In 1958, he was made senior bishop of the CME Church and remained actively associated with the Holsey Institute until his death. At the time of his death, he was also serving as minister of Ebenezer CME Church in South Boston, Virginia.

Bell was a lifetime member of the NAACP. In the 1920s, he was affiliated with the Garvey movement, although not a full Garveyite. In 1951, Bell was among a group of Black leaders, including Mary McLeod Bethune and A. Philip Randolph, who met with President Harry S. Truman and urged him to make hiring Black Americans in government a priority. In 1957, he was one of the Black leaders participating in the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC, organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. Bell died in 1962.

"Popular Etymologies in Genesis Chapters I-XXV:18." M.A. thesis, Northwestern University, 1915.

"The Christian Spirit in Race Redemption," Negro World, August 11, 1923.

"The Mutawakkili of As-Suyuti." PhD diss., Yale University, 1924.

The Mutawakkili of As-Suyuti. Cairo, Egypt: Nile Mission Press, 1924.