H. Milton Mickens

Henry Milton Mickens was born in 1879 in Meriden, Connecticut.¹ According to the Centennial Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1916), he “studied at Chicago and Yale Universities [and held] the degree of A.M.”² The exact dates he attended Yale have not yet been confirmed, but he likely attended the Yale Divinity School in the 1890s or early 1900s.

He was married to Mary E. Mickens and the couple had at least two children.³ In 1949, he married Ruby Traynham.⁴

He had a long career as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a missionary, and an educator. In 1904, he was principal of Delhi Institute in Louisiana (later Lampton College) and founded and edited the publication The Negro Lamp. ⁵

In the 1910s, he served churches in Indianapolis, Indiana; Seattle, Washington; Salina, Kansas; Sacramento, California, and Baltimore, Maryland. While in Salina, he attended Kansas Wesleyan University.⁶ In 1917, his congregation in Salina proposed the building of a new church in a predominantly white neighborhood. White residents protested, asking the city council not to grant a building permit. Mickens wrote in the Salina Semi-Weekly Journal:

The people who enter a protest against a colored church in their neighborhood do so without due regard for God and upon the most groundless logic for they would not hesitate to take a colored person into their family to prepare their food or care for their children. This protest is not founded on reason but unjust prejudice.⁷

In the 1920s, he served churches in West Virginia.⁸

He spent time abroad as a missionary, including in St. Croix, locations in South America, and South Africa.⁹

He served as dean of the R. R. Wright, Jr. School of Religion in Memphis, Tennessee.¹⁰ In the early 1950s, he served churches in Pennsylvania. He died in 1956 while in Miami, Florida for the AME Church’s annual conference. ¹¹