William Yancy Bell (or William Yancey Bell) (February 23, 1887 – April 10, 1962) received a Ph.D. from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1924 was a sometime follower of

Marcus Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...

and became a

bishop A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

of the

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church The Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church is a historically black denomination within the broader context of Wesleyan Methodism founded and organized by John Wesley in England in 1744 and established in America as the Methodist Episcopal ...

. At Yale he specialized in the Department of Semitic Languahes and Letters.Negro Yearbook by

Monroe Work Monroe Nathan Work (August 15, 1866 – May 2, 1945) was an African-American sociologist who founded the Department of Records and Research at the Tuskegee Institute in 1908. His published works include the ''Negro Year Book'' and '' A Bibliograph ...

Tuskegee Institute 1925 page 49 Dr. Bell was very active in civil rights issues as evidenced by his being a member of a Negro delegation to visit President

Harry Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

to get him to integrate the U.S. Armed Forces. He worked with

W. E. B. Dubois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian Sociology, sociologist, Socialism, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanism, Pan-Africanist Civil and political civil rights activist. Bor ...

and ordained

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

on January 17, 1942, when King was 13 years old.

References

*Bell WY. THE MUTAWAKKILI OF AS-SUYUTI. New Haven: Yale University, 1924 *Bardoplph R. ''The Negro Vanguard''. New York: Rinehart & Co, Inc., 1959; *Burkett R.K. ''Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978. American Methodist bishops Yale Divinity School alumni Clergy of historically African-American Christian denominations 1887 births 1962 deaths {{Methodism-bishop-stub