Bishop Frederick Douglass Jordan

August 8, 1901- December 16, 1979

Bishop Frederick Douglass Jordan attended Howard University as an undergraduate. During his sophomore year (1919-1920), he was a member of the Freshman-Sophomore Intercollegiate Debate Team. During his junior year, he was part of the executive committee which formed Howard's first college branch of the NAACP. The group sponsored lectures on campus by both James Weldon Johnson, Secretary of the NAACP, and W.E.B. Dubois, the NAACP Director of Publishing and Research. Bishop Jordan was also the Treasurer of Howard's first student council and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. He became a pastor in 1923 while completing his Bachelor of Arts degree at Northwestern University, Chicago, IL. He graduated from Northwestern in 1924 with a major in English and minors in economics and Greek. Bishop Jordan earned a theology degree from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL in 1925. Frederick Jordan was elected a bishop of the A.M.E. Church in 1952. He was briefly president of Western College and Campbell College and served as a trustee at both Wilberforce University and Western College. Bishop Jordan was appointed in 1968 the head of the A.M.E. Office of Urban Ministries and Ecumenical Relations. He was a member of the General Board of the National Council of the World Methodist Council, was elected as the first vice president of the National Council of Churches in 1969, and in 1973 became the first black chairman of the Consultation on Church Union, an organization founded in the early 1960s to forge a formal union of nine denominations.