Samuel B. McKinney

Samuel Berry McKinney (December 28, 1926 – April 7, 2018) 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. 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. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II before graduating in 1949.

The 2004 anthology Words? Words! Words., edited by Georgia S. McDade and sharing the poetry of the African-American Writers' Alliance, features a foreword by McKinney. In it, he writes: "Prose and poetry permit persons to speak, write, sing, and play out of the depths of their soul. Much of what you will encounter within this document–in the words of James Weldon Johnson–'hammered out on the anvil of adversity.' "

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. :55 McKinney and Jackson led a march on city hall, where many youth activists staged a daylong sit-in of the mayor's office. That year, Mayor Clinton had proposed creating a city human rights commission to monitor housing discrimination rather than creating an ordinance, which was opposed by real estate and business interests. Two weeks after the sit-in, the city council decided to create the commission rather than pass an ordinance. McKinney was one of the two Black members of the inaugural 12-person committee. The Central Area Civil Rights Committee formed in 1962 in pursuit of desegregating Seattle Public Schools, led by Jackson and later Adams. In 1966 he co-founded the Seattle Opportunity Industrialization Center (SOIC) and was its first president and CEO. The SOIC was a nonprofit that provided vocational training.

Personal life and death McKinney married Louise Jones; they had two daughters.

Legacy In 1998, the Samuel Berry McKinney Manor was built across the street from the Mount Zion church, with 40 affordable housing units. 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". Senator Maria Cantwell honored McKinney at the floor of the U.S. Senate on May 7, 2018.

Works