Samuel Moss Carter

Samuel Moss Carter was born in 1904 in New Haven, Pennsylvania. He spent most of his childhood in Columbus, Ohio. His father and grandfather were both Baptist ministers. Carter completed a bachelor's degree at Ohio State in 1927, then continued his education at the Yale Divinity School. He completed a bachelor of divinity in 1930. Records show he remained at Yale, taking courses in the Graduate School through 1932 and continued coursework off and on through the 1930s.

He went on to a long career in education and ministry. In North Carolina, he taught philosophy and religion at Shaw University and worked as a pastor. In the mid-1940s, he moved to St. Petersburg, Florida to pastor the First Institutional Baptist Church. There, his wife, Nellie Carter, was credited with opening the town’s first library for Black patrons. A few years later, the Carters moved to Richmond, Virginia, where Samuel was a dean and a professor at Virginia Union University and Union Theological Seminary. He received a master's degree in theology in 1957 and a doctorate of divinity in 1982 from Union. He was also pastor of First Baptist Church in Centralia, Virginia from 1950 to 1990. Carter died in 1999.

The Work Of The Black Minister In Historical Perspective. Richmond, VA: Virginia Union University, 1988.