Walters was elected the first president, while Fortune became the first chairman of the executive committee.īeginning in Washington, D.C., in December 1898, the Council met in large cities around the country, attracting large audiences of African-American journalists, clergymen, lawyers, educators, and community activists. Its constitution declared the Council nonpartisan in nature, and envisioned a structure of state and local councils, gathered together in annual meetings with delegates from affiliated organizations, schools, and newspapers, to protest against racial injustice and discrimination and to lobby for protective laws. The new National Afro-American Council was intended to replicate the old League. Anthony and the widow of Frederick Douglass. More than 150 leaders from across the country signed the call, which resulted in an organizational meeting in Rochester, New York, in September 1898, also attended by Susan B. In March 1898, alarmed by an upsurge in violent lynchings of African Americans across the country, Walters asked Fortune to publish a nationwide appeal for a meeting of African American leaders. Walters immediately endorsed the League, which met in early 1890 in Knoxville, but went defunct by 1893. While in New York, he became acquainted with journalist Timothy Thomas Fortune, who was in the process of organizing his National Afro-American League, designed to protect African Americans against lynching and racial discrimination. In May 1892, he was elected bishop of the Seventh District of the General Conference of the A.M.E. In 1889, Walters was selected to represent the Zion Church in London at the World's Sunday School Convention, and went on to visit other parts of Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. Zion Quarterly Conference, serving pastorates in Indianapolis, Louisville, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, Tennessee, before his assignment to Mother Zion Church in New York City in 1888. Within two years, he was licensed to preach by the A.M.E. He was valedictorian of his high school class in 1875. In 1871 he moved to Louisville, where he worked as a waiter in private homes, hotels, and on steamboats. He was educated at a private school taught by a number of teachers. Walters was born August 1, 1858, in Bardstown, Kentucky, the oldest son of Henry and Harriet Walters. Born a slave in Bardstown, Kentucky, just before the Civil War, he rose to become a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church at the age of 33, then president of the National Afro-American Council, the nation's largest civil rights organization, at the age of 40, serving in that post for most of the next decade. Bishop Alexander Walters (Aug– February 2, 1917) was an American clergyman and noted civil rights leader.
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