James Finley Wilson

Background

James F. Wilson was born on August 28, 1881, in Dickson, Tennessee, the son of Rev. James L. and Nancy Wiley Wilson. His grandparents had been slaves.

Education

Wilson attended Nashville's Pearl High School and Fisk University. While in Denver, Colorado, in 1894, Wilson joined one of the offshoots of Coxey's Army; but in Council Bluffs, Iowa, an aunt forced him to return home.

Career

He later held a variety of jobs in Chicago, Kansas City, Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and the Klondike. He was, according to his own statement, "bell-boy, newsboy, bootblack, porter, hotel waiter, head waiter, cow-boy, miner. "

Wilson was editor of the Salt Lake City Plaindealer and in later years worked on the Baltimore Times, New York Age, and Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Advocate-Verdict; founded, edited, and published the Washington Eagle (formerly the Sun); and helped found the Norfolk Journal and Guide.

It was in the West that Wilson began his long association with the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, the black counterpart to the older, exclusively white Elks.

In 1903 he joined lodges in Denver and Boulder, Colorado, and the following year attended his first Grand Lodge meeting (national convention) as a delegate. Wilson was elected Grand Organizer in 1912, but the position was abolished the next year. The reigning Grand Exalted Ruler then appointed him Grand Traveling Secretary, in which post he crisscrossed the country, organizing new lodges. During these years Wilson also continued his newspaper work and began to emerge as a public figure.

During World War I he attended a meeting with the French attaché and government figures Newton Baker, George Creel, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, discussing the role of blacks in the war. Wilson was elected Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks of the World on August 28, 1922, and began the longest term in the history of the order, nearly thirty years. He traveled some 50, 000 miles his first year and was able to report the establishment of ninety new lodges to the 1923 convention.

In 1924 he visited Cuba; and in later years he announced lodges in Great Britain, Canada, and Latin America. Persons of Oriental descent were welcomed into the order during his term as Grand Exalted Ruler; and the Elks of the World grew from 300 to 1, 300 lodges and from 30, 000 members to over 500, 000.

Wilson called a 1927 national convention of seventy-five black fraternities to protest against discrimination; and in 1928, at Chicago, he called for the election of a black man to Congress.

In 1933 he became president of the Colored Voters League of America and the Ethiopian Federation, Inc. He worked for cooperation between the Elks and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration, and raised money for the accused in the Scottsboro trial.

During World War II, Wilson played an important role in the war bond drive and served on a draft board. In 1945 he helped to organize the Federated Organization of Colored People, which, during the formation of the United Nations, took part in State Department meetings of advisers and consultants. When the International Association of Colored People of the World was formed (1945), Wilson became its president.

In 1946 he unsuccessfully ran as the Republican candidate for the New York State Senate seat in the Twenty-Third District. He was the Elks of the World representative to the World Conference on Human Rights in 1947, and two years later he organized a meeting of American blacks to discuss the racial problem.

Late in his life doctors wanted to amputate his leg because of complications from diabetes, but he refused. He died on February 19, 1952, in Washington, District of Columbia.

Achievements

• The newspaperman and politician, James Finley Wilson was a powerful fraternal order leader of the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World (I. B. P. O. E. of W. ), one of the largest African American fraternal organizations in the nation. Under Wilson's leadership Elk programs in civil liberties, education and health were instituted.

Works

• book

  • The colored Elks and national defense

Membership

In 1920, James F. Wilson was elected first vice-president of the National Negro Press Association and succeeded to the presidency in 1921, a post he held until 1924.

From 1922 to 1948, Wilson was a member of the Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World (I. B. P. O. E. of W. ).

In 1933, he became president of the Colored Voters League of America and the Ethiopian Federation, Inc.

Connections

On July 28, 1924, James F. Wilson married Leah Belle Farrar; they had no children.

Father:

James L. Wilson

Mother:

Nancy Wiley Wilson

Wife:

Leah Belle Wilson (Farrar)