Note to editors: A version of this column was distributed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2025.

He helped pave the way for Martin Luther King Jr. and others to end Jim Crow – but few know his name.

So respected was this civil rights pioneer that, at his funeral in 1961, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall served as a pallbearer, and King delivered his invocation.

His name is John Wesley Dobbs.

I learned about his incredible story after reading Bill Steigerwald’s powerful 2017 book, “30 Days a Black Man,” which documents Dobbs’ civil rights contributions.

Born into poverty in 1882 in rural Kennesaw, Georgia, Dobbs’ parents were former slaves – his mother’s biological father was a slave owner.

Smart and driven, Dobbs educated himself by reading constantly. Though he attended college briefly, he had to drop out to care for his ill mother and never earned a college degree.

In his early 20s, he passed the........

© Yuma Sun