Guest Column: The civil rights pioneer history forgot |
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........