John Hope (June 2, 1868 - February 20, 1936), born in Augusta, Georgia, was an African-American educator and political activist. He was the son of a white father, who was a farmer, and a black mother.
Hope graduated from Worcester Academy in 1890, then taught at Brown University. On December 29, 1897 he married the former Lugenia D. Burns[1], who would become a well-known social reformer. In 1898, he became professor of Classics at Atlanta Baptist College, (now Morehouse College), and in 1906 was appointed the institution's first black president.
Read more about John Hope, free from the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
Hope joined W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter as founders of the Niagara Movement.
Hope served as a YMCA secretary with black soldiers in France from 1918 until 1919 and organized the Commission on Interracial Cooperation of which he became the first president.
In 1928, Morehouse and Spelman College became affiliated with Atlanta University and Hope was unanimously chosen to be president of the institution. He held this position until his death in 1936.
In 1932, Hope received an LL.D. from Bates College.
Hope wass a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans. He was the Convention Speaker for the fraternity's Silver Anniverary convention in Nashville, Tennessee.
Hope's great-great granddaughter Leah Hope is a GA reporter for WLS-TV in Chicago.
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