Robert
R. Church Jr., a prominent Republican, civil rights leader, and
businessman, was born in Memphis on October 26, 1885. He was the son of
millionaire Robert R. Church Sr. and his wife Anna Wright Church. Robert
Church Jr. married Sara P. Johnson of Washington, D.C., in 1911, and
they had one child, Sara Roberta Church.
Church
Jr. was educated at Morgan Park Military Academy in Illinois, Oberlin
College in Ohio, and the Packard School of Business in New York. He also
received two years of training in banking on Wall Street. One of his
first jobs was managing Church Park and Auditorium on Beale Street. He
later became cashier of the Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Company,
founded by his father, whom he succeeded as president after his father's
death in 1912.
Active
in civil rights and politics, Church Jr. founded and financed the
Lincoln League in Memphis in 1916. The Lincoln League organized voter
registration drives, voting schools, and paid poll taxes for African
American voters, who were largely disfranchised from mainstream
politics. Within months of its creation, the League had registered ten
thousand voters. A Lincoln League ticket, which included an African
American congressional candidate for West Tennessee, entered the 1916
election. The ticket lost, but its attempt established the Lincoln
League as a viable and respected political force in Memphis; the league
later expanded into a statewide and a national organization.
One
year after establishing the Lincoln League in 1917, Church organized
the NAACP's first branch in Tennessee in Memphis. In 1919 Church was
elected to the national board of NAACP.
Church
was a Memphis delegate to eight successive Republican National
Conventions from 1912 to 1940. His political organization, the Black and
Tans wing of the Memphis Republican Party, supplied the swing votes
that carried Republicans to victory in several elections in Memphis and
Shelby County. National party officials acknowledged his leadership by
consulting with him about federal patronage. In recognition of his
controlling influence on the Lincoln League, Republican presidents and
other high party officials also consulted with Church about political
strategy. Church served on many important policy committees of the
Republican Party but was not interested in prestigious positions for
himself. In 1922, for example, he declined a presidential appointment to
be chairman of the U.S. Commission to Study American Relations with
Haiti; two years later, he rejected a similar position with a study
commission about American relations with the Virgin Islands.
In
1924 the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., invited Church
to become a founder life member. This was probably the first time an
African American had been invited to join a prestigious predominantly
white country club. But he rejected the invitation because he was the
only member of his race to be so invited. Church was active in a number
of other social organizations, including the Iroquois Club of Memphis,
the Frogs of New York City, and Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
During
the New Deal era, Church's political organization and influence began
to diminish due to President Franklin Roosevelt's appeal to African
American voters, and, more importantly, to the increasing power of the
Boss Crump political machine. Church and Crump were neither allies nor
partners in political activities. They had totally different political
philosophies and maintained autonomous political organizations.
In
1940 the city administration under Crump's direction moved to destroy
Church's political base by seizing his real estate holdings, allegedly
for taxes. Church had no effective redress. He subsequently established
himself in Washington, D.C., and was active in national Republican
politics. He died of a heart attack on April 17, 1952.
