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Chavis, Benjamin Franklin, Jr.

3 articles on Chavis, Benjamin Franklin, Jr.

  • Chavis-Muhammad, Benjamin

    Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century

    Word Count: 663      Includes:  Bibliography

    (b. 22 January 1948), minister and civil rights activist. Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr. was born in segregated Oxford, North Carolina, to a family that had an impressive legacy within the African American community: the family patriarch, John Chavis (1763–1838), was a Revolutionary war hero, landowner, and the first black ordained preacher of the Presbyterian Church. Chavis extended that legacy with his own education at the University of North Carolina, Duke University Divinity School, and Howard University, as well as with his involvement with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as statewide youth coordinator in North Carolina from 1965 to 1969.

    In 1969, Chavis was sent to Wilmington, North Carolina, as the newly appointed Southern Regional Program Director of the United Church ...
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  • Chavis, Benjamin Franklin, Jr.

    Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

    Word Count: 603      Includes:  Bibliography

    1948–
    Civil rights organizer and former executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who helped organize the Million Man March. According to civil rights activist and former NAACP director Benjamin Chavis, “the struggle for freedom, the struggle for justice, was a part of my family roots even before I was born.” Chavis, who was born in Oxford, North Carolina, became a member of the NAACP when he was twelve. At age fourteen he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and while attending the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, he became the North Carolina SCLC coordinator. Following his graduation in 1969, he continued his civil rights work at the Washington office of the Commission for Racial Justice, an organization sponsored by the United Church ...
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  • Chavis, Benjamin Franklin, Jr.

    Source: African American National Biography

    Word Count: 1879      Includes:  Further Reading

    (22 Jan. 1948– ), clergyman and civil rights activist, was born in Oxford, North Carolina, the son of Benjamin Chavis Sr., a lay minister at the local Episcopalian congregation, and Elisabath Ridley, a teacher at the black Central Orphanage School. Young Benjamin was descended from a prominent African American family that included John Chavis, a wealthy landowner and the first black ordained preacher in the Presbyterian Church.

    As a teenager Benjamin Chavis became actively involved with his parish, a role that led to his appointment as statewide youth coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), initiating his involvement in the civil rights movement and a lifelong commitment to African American youth. In the years following his education at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh he received a bachelor of arts degree ...
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