James Walker Hood

James Walker Hood
Hood, c. 1910
Born(1831-05-30)May 30, 1831
Kennett Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania
DiedOctober 30, 1918(1918-10-30) (aged 87)
Fayetteville, North Carolina
NationalityAmerican
OccupationMinister
Political partyRepublican
Personal
ReligionAfrican Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

James Walker Hood (May 30, 1831 – October 30, 1918) was an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion) bishop in North Carolina from 1872 to 1916. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he moved to New York and became active in the AME Zion church. Well before the Emancipation Proclamation, he was an active abolitionist.

During the American Civil War he went to New Bern, North Carolina, where he preached for the church to the black people and soldiers in the area. He was very successful and became an important religious and political leader in North Carolina, becoming "one of the most significant and crucial African American religious and race leaders during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries".[1]

By 1887 he had founded over six hundred churches in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and erected about five hundred church buildings.[2] He was politically and religiously active as well, supporting education, civil rights, and the ordination of women.

  1. ^ Martin 1999, p 3
  2. ^ William J. Simmons, and Henry McNeal Turner. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. GM Rewell & Company, 1887. p 133–143