Background
David Burgess was born on June 15, 1917, in New York, United States. His parents, John Stewart and Stella Burgess took him as an infant to China, where they were YMCA missionaries. David had a younger brother, Vinton Douglas Burgess.
1920
J. Stewart Burgess Family (David, Stewart, Stella, and Vinton)
1926
Vint and Dave Burgess
Peitaiho, China
Dave and Vint Burgess mugging in Peitaiho, China
Vint and Dave Burgess
Vinton Douglas Burgess and David Stewart Burgess
Vint and Dave Burgess
Diplomat director minister author
David Burgess was born on June 15, 1917, in New York, United States. His parents, John Stewart and Stella Burgess took him as an infant to China, where they were YMCA missionaries. David had a younger brother, Vinton Douglas Burgess.
David graduated from Oberlin College in 1939. In 1942 he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York.
In 1942 David Stewart Burgess was ordained a minister in the Congregational Church. He had registered as a conscientious objector on the eve of World War II; subsequent efforts to serve as a chaplain with the troops overseas were turned down due to his prior illness.
In the 1940s, he and his wife lived and labored with migrant farmworkers in Florida and New Jersey. He was a chaplain to the Southern Tenant Farmers Union from 1944 to 1947. In 1945, he began one of his first housing campaigns, helping successfully block the demolition of the Delmo Homes in Missouri, where 549 tenant farmer and sharecropper families lived.
From 1947 to 1949 he was an organizer for a textile workers' union in South Carolina. In 1949 David was an organizer for the political action committee in North Carolina. From 1951 to 1955 he served as an executive director of the Georgia council.
Later, he became a diplomat and served as labor attaché at the United States Embassy in India (1955-1960), chief of Indonesia-Burma desk of Agency for International Development (1961-1963), Peace Corps director in Indonesia (1963-1964), and UNICEF director in Southeast Asia (1966-1972).
From 1972 to 1977 Burgess served as a senior spokesperson in the United States and Canada and director of the Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities, Cambridge from 1977 to 1978.
Burgess returned to full-time ministry in 1979 to become pastor at two churches in inner-city Newark, New Jersey. In 1990 he retired and moved with his wife to Benicia. There he led the founding of the Affordable Housing Affiliation in 1994 and served as its first president. In 2000 his autobiography, "Fighting for Social Justice," was published.
Burgess was a member of the United Church of Christ, Protestant Christian denomination.
David was a Democrat.
Burgess's life had many "callings": the ministry, labor organizing, opposition to racial intolerance, development work in Asia, and finally housing activism. He was not immune to self-doubt. But all his work reflected his core belief that it is a Christian duty to address poverty and injustice.
David was a member of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.
In 1927, newly returned to the United States, David attended a Giants baseball game and became a lifelong fan of the team. As a teenager, he nearly died of rheumatic fever and from that ordeal acquired another lasting passion, jogging, and healthy living.
David married Sybil Alice Stevens on November 20, 1941. The couple had five children: Laurel, Lyman, John, Emagene Burgess Castro, and Stevens.