Samuel B. McKinney
Samuel Berry McKinney was an American Christian pastor and Civil Rights leader. He was the pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle for four decades. He attended the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, and he served on the Seattle Human Rights Commission.
Early life
Samuel Berry McKinney was born on December 28, 1926, in Flint, Michigan, to Ruth Berry and Wade Hampton McKinney. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where his father was a pastor. Samuel had an older brother, Wade, and two twin sisters, Virginia Ruth and Mary Louise.The older Wade's father was a sharecropper in Georgia, and Wade and his siblings worked in the fields as well. When Wade's brother George got in a fight with the landowner, Andrew Thompson, he was attacked by a posse and fled to Ohio. Wade soon left to go to [Morehouse College|Atlanta Baptist College], followed by Rochester Theological Seminary. He married Ruth Berry, who was the daughter of a Baptist minister.
Wade pushed against racial discrimination and hosted civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, and A. Philip Randolph at his church, and Samuel heard them as a child. Ruth became the president of the Greater Cleveland Council of American Baptist Women, and was named second vice-president of the American Baptist Convention, the first Black woman to hold that role. McKinney said his mother was loving and involved, but used frequent physical discipline.
Education and Army service
McKinney was drafted in 1945, during his freshman year at Morehouse College. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II before graduating in 1949. He wanted to become a civil rights lawyer, but Morehouse president Benjamin Mays convinced him to switch to ministry. McKinney later said that a professor told him that law can combat injustices once they are committed, but religion can change people and institutions before they commit injustices.McKinney's time at college was his first time in the Deep South, which had deeper segregation in the United States|segregation] and more hostile racism than he had experienced before. His parents warned him about keeping quiet to avoid trouble, but he also saw how black workers in the South could covertly retaliate against their patrons' racism. At Morehouse, McKinney also deepened his friendship with Martin [Luther King Jr.], who he had befriended at religious conventions as children.
During World War II McKinney grew outraged at the racism he and other African-Americans encountered. The American Red Cross held a heavily publicized national blood drive, but initially banned blood donations from Black people, and later segregated their blood when public outcry forced a policy change. Then when McKinney was drafted in 1945, the U.S. Army remained Racial [segregation in the United States Armed Forces|segregated]. He recalled one dining experience as he traveled through Texas, when all Black diners ate from cardboard plates with wooden knives in a small room, while white diners, including German prisoners-of-war, ate with a tablecloth, silverware, and cut glass stemware.
McKinney earned a divinity degree from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in 1952.
Career
Church leadership
McKinney began his ministry in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was the pastor of Olney Street Baptist Church from 1955 to 1958. He moved to Seattle, Washington in 1958, where he served as the pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church from 1958 to 1998, and from 2005 to 2008.Mount Zion was one of the oldest Black churches in Seattle, located in the Central District. It was also one of Washington's oldest and largest Black churches. Seattle's Black population had quadrupled after World War II, when wartime jobs were abundant. Most of Seattle's Black residents lived in the Central District because they were blocked from living anywhere else, due to racial restrictive covenants.
In 1958 McKinney helped found Mount Zion Baptist Church Credit Union, the first protestant credit union in the Pacific Northwest. He later saw the church found a preschool and kindergarten, as well as the Ethnic School, later renamed the Louise Jones McKinney Learning Center. In 1975, Mount Zion built a new sanctuary inspired by African influences. McKinney also led the church as it started a $20,000 annual academic scholarship fund.
McKinney made the church the largest Black church in Washington, growing it from 800 members to over 2,500 during his tenure.
Civil Rights activism
McKinney invited Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. to Seattle in 1961, and he attended the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. McKinney, John Hurst Adams, Mance Jackson, and Lemuel Petersen spoke to Seattle's other clergy at a meeting inside Mount Zion, convincing 84 religious leaders to join a march for open housing on June 30, 1963. He also marched for other civil rights causes, and advocated for equal treatment in jobs, housing, and education alongside the local CORE, NAACP, and Urban League leadership. He helped to desegregate schools and participated in boycotts of hotels, businesses, and the civil service to change their discriminatory employment practices. He was an inaugural member of the Seattle Human Rights Commission, helping pass Seattle's first fair-housing act, and he served on the Central Area Civil Rights Committee.McKinney was a co-founder of Liberty Bank, "the first black-owned bank in Seattle." He started it because local banks would deny loans to Black applicants. In 1966 he co-founded the Seattle Opportunity Industrialization Center and was its first president and CEO. The SOIC was a nonprofit that provided vocational training. He sought spiritual and practical solutions to institutional racism, combating redlining and financial exclusion.
McKinney continued his civil rights activism throughout his career. In 1985, he was arrested at a protest against apartheid outside the South African consul's house. He was the first Black president of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, chaired the Washington State Rainbow Coalition, and was a board member for the Meredith Mathews East Madison YMCA, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Washington Mutual Savings Bank.
Academia
McKinney returned to the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School to earn a Doctor of Ministry degree in 1975.With Floyd Massey Jr., McKinney co-authored Church Administration in the Black Perspective. According to The Los Angeles Times, "The book outlined the need for strong, charismatic ministers in urban black churches and remains an important reference work in church organization."
Personal life and death
McKinney married Louise Jones; they had two daughters. Jones directed Seattle Public Schools' early childhood education program and died in 2012.McKinney died on April 7, 2018.
Legacy
In 1998, the Samuel Berry McKinney Manor was built across the street from the Mount Zion church, with 40 affordable housing units.McKinney was chosen as Seafair's King Neptune for 2003, alongside Rita Ryder as Queen Alcyone. Two more activists were chosen in the following years, as outsider selections that surprised the activists themselves: Roberto Maestas and Bob Santos of the Gang of Four.
In 2014, the Seattle City Council named a street after McKinney, naming 19th Avenue in front of the Mount Zion Baptist Church the "Rev. Dr. S. McKinney Avenue".