Stephen Gill Spottswood

Stephen Gill Spottswood (July 18, 1897 – December 2, 1974) He attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and then Freeport High School in Maine. He went on to Albright College, earning a B.A. in history in 1917; Gordon Divinity School; and Yale Divinity School, where he earned his doctorate.

Religious leadership Shortly after finishing his undergraduate work, Spottswood was named assistant pastor of the First Evangelical United Brethren Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, followed soon after by an appointment with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ). Though he would later play a more conventional leadership position, he also participated in a number of public protests, including sit-ins, boycotts, and pickets, believing that those activities which had economic impact were among the most effective for bringing about change.

Keynote address at the 1970 NAACP convention Spottswood earned a reputation as an outspoken critic of racial injustice and several times attracted press coverage for his political censures. At the 61st annual convention of the NAACP, held in Cincinnati in 1970, the 72-year-old Spottswood delivered a controversial and widely publicized keynote address covering a number of topics. He warned people not to trust segregationist Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, who had begun to speak of a more positive stance on racial issues. Spottswood said it was "the first time since 1920 that the national Administration has made it a matter of calculated policy to work against the needs and aspirations of the largest minority of its citizens". He went on to declare that the NAACP, which had traditionally been viewed as nonpartisan, "considers itself in a state of war against President Nixon".

Following the convention, Spottswood drew "staunch support from the Negro press as a whole", according to The Crisis, which aggregated and republished many of the news pieces, while "there was division among the remainder of the press ranging from hearty approval to disparagement". Spottswood replied to Tucker by calling him a "falsifier", expressing he did not wish to call his associate a liar, and to his other critics he defended his "anti-Negro" statement, insisting it was "sustained by the record".

At the following year's convention, Spottswood used his keynote address to soften the NAACP's stance on Nixon, admitting that his administration "has taken certain steps and has announced policies in certain phases of the civil rights issue which have earned cautious and limited approval among black Americans", who, he cautioned, should not "live in a vacuum as long as he's President".

Personal life In 1919 he married Viola Estelle Booker, whom he was with until her death in a fire in 1953. After his death, his papers were donated to the Amistad Research Center at Dillard University.