Silas X. Floyd

Silas Xavier Floyd (1869 – September 19, 1923) was an African-American educator, preacher, and journalist. Active in Augusta, Georgia, he was a writer and editor at the Augusta Sentinel and later wrote for the Augusta Chronicle. In 1892 he co-founded the Negro Press Association of Georgia. He was pastor at Augusta's Tabernacle Baptist Church and was a prominent agent of the International Sunday School Convention. He was also a public school principal and an officer of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools.

Personal life Floyd's father, David Floyd was born in 1829 in Sandersville, Georgia. He was likely born a slave and married a woman named Sarah Jane and had seven children. four years after the end of the American Civil War and six years after the Emancipation Proclamation. David Floyd was a preacher and a model for his son. Silas worked as a boy, delivering papers and shining shoes. One noted customer of Floyd's was merchant J. B. White, with whom Floyd would have a lifelong relationship. Floyd also began following a religious path early in his life, aiding in holding religious services at a jail with the YMCA in 1883.

Floyd attended Ware High School where he was valedictorian and was an outstanding and honored student. He graduated from Atlanta University in May 1891. Floyd gave an oration at the graduation and his class numbered five graduates of the college course including educator Julius Clifton Styles and physician Loring Brainard Palmer and nine graduates of the normal (teaching) course, including Helena Brown Cobb and Adrienne McNeil Herndon. In 1894 he received an A.M. from the school. In 1892 he cofounded the Negro Press Association of Georgia and later served as the body's president.

Floyd was active in religious life, joining a Baptist church at the age of 12, being licensed to preach in 1896, and soon after being ordained. In 1899 he was pastor of Tabernacle Church. Floyd was also an agent of the International Sunday School Convention beginning at the Boston convention of the organization in 1896. In 1900, Charles T. Walker of Augusta's Tabernacle Baptist Church moved to lead a church in New York City, and Floyd, who had been his assistant, stepped in to lead the body. In 1903 he received a degree of Doctor of Divinity from Morris Brown University. In 1918, the association established the National Note-Book quarterly magazine with Floyd as its editor. This position was similar to that of Booker T. Washington, who influenced Floyd. Floyd was appointed secretary of the Colored State Food Conservation Board of Georgia by Governor Hugh Dorsey in early 1918.

Floyd became an important civic leader. In 1916, Floyd chaired the Colored Charitable Relief Fund in the aftermath of the Great Augusta Fire. Floyd and Walker were liaisons between the black and white communities in Augusta. After the death of his old friend and benefactor, J. B White, Floyd was appointed as a member of the committee to decide how his money would be spent, advocating for some of the money to be put towards the building of a new grammar school for black students.

After Floyd's death, his library was donated to Atlanta University. Members of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity purchased the house where he lived from 1906 to his death for their chapter house in 1953 and placed a historical marker about Floyd in the front of the building. Floyd was a member of the historic Bannaker Lodge #3 F & A.M. PHA, the third oldest Prince Hall-affiliated masonic lodge in the state of Georgia. The former Silas X. Floyd Elementary School was named for Floyd.