Alexander Walters

Alexander Walters (August 1, 1858 – February 2, 1917) was an American clergyman and civil rights leader. Born enslaved 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.

Biography Walters was born August 1, 1858, in Bardstown, Kentucky, the oldest son of Henry and Harriet Walters. He was educated at a private school taught by a number of teachers. In 1871 he moved to Louisville, where he worked as a waiter in private homes, hotels, and on steamboats. He was valedictorian of his high school class in 1875. Within two years, he was licensed to preach by the A.M.E. Zion Quarterly Conference. He started out as a circuit minister, first serving the Corydon Circuit and then in 1881 the Cloverport Circuit where he founded five new churches. As a circuit minister he supplemented his income as a teacher in black schools. One of his students was Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. with whom he had a great influence. He then served 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.

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. In May 1892, he was elected bishop of the Seventh District of the General Conference of the A.M.E. Zion Church, meeting in Pittsburgh. and becoming President of the Pan-African Association, and visited West Africa in 1910 and the Caribbean in 1911. A well-respected figure internationally, he declined an offer in 1915 by US President Woodrow Wilson to become US minister to Liberia. Walters died on February 2, 1917, in New York City, of natural causes.

Private life Walters was married three times and had six children. His first wife, Katie Knox Walters, died in 1896; his second wife, Emeline Virginia Byrd Walters, died in 1902. He was survived by his third wife, Lelia Coleman Walters. At the time of his death, his wife was employed as a clerk for the United States Bureau of Immigration on Ellis Island. The couple's son, Hillis Walters (1904–1984), was an actor during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s and, later, a composer. His most successful composition was the song "Pass Me By" (1946), with lyrics by Mercer Ellington. It was recorded by Lena Horne, Carmen McRae and Peggy Lee. Bishop Walters is buried in Brooklyn, New York, in Mother Zion's Cypress Hills Cemetery.