William J. Watkins, Sr.

William J. Watkins Sr. (c. 1803–1858) was an African-American abolitionist, educator, and minister from Baltimore, Maryland.

Early life Watkins was born in about 1803 in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of William Watkins, a founding trustee of the Sharp Street Methodist Church. At the age of 19, Watkins became a teacher at the school. This followed the departure of Coker to be part of the colonization movement, moving to Liberia.

Watkins and Russell had eight children, including William J. (1826), Richard R. (1827), George T. (1828), John L. (1831), Henry G. (1834), Henrietta (1836), Robert P. (1841), and Lloyd N. (1845). William J., like his father, became a prominent abolitionist, at one time writing for Frederick Douglass's The North Star. Frances would become one of the co-founders of the American Women's Suffrage Association (AWS) during the mainstream Women's Suffrage Movement, in 1869. Francis was also an accomplished and much-published African-American poet.

Career Watkins is noted as having had a variety of positions, including teacher, newspaper correspondent, minister for the Sharp Street AME Church, founder of a Black Literary Society, and a "self-taught practitioner of medicine."

Abolition work Watkins was a staunch slavery abolitionist, as well as an opponent to the colonization movement, whose proposed solution to slavery was to send black people back to Africa in order to Christianize Africa. He wrote antislavery and anti-colonization pieces, presented in writing and as speeches, making points that the colonization movement was more to serve white people than it was to free black people. With his work beginning in the 1820s and continuing until the end of his life, his writings appeared in Freedom's Journal, William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, Benjamin Lundy's Genius of Universal Emancipation, and, later in life, Frederick Douglass' Paper. Watkins would later become a subscription agent for The Liberator, which helped spread abolitionist ideas within Baltimore.

Legacy Watkins is the namesake of The William J. Watkins, Sr. Educational Institute, whose stated mission is to "ensure that ALL children, especially those in under-served and under-resourced communities, receive the BEST education possible."