"John Alexander Somerville" (1882?-Feburary 11-1973).

Civil rights activist, religious pioneer,dentist, and investor, was born in Kingston Jamaica, the 

With his wife Vada Watson Somerville.

youngest son of Thomas Gustavious Somerville,an Anglican minister.Little is known about his mother. He was educated in the Jamaican public schools, where learned that social status and racial attitudes often triumphed over equality, and between 1897 and 1900 he attended and graduated from Mico College in Kingston with a teaching degree.John left home for the United States in December 1901, at age 19, in the company of a childhood friend, seeking both adventure and a future devoid of racial intolerance. Arriving in San Francisco with some money from his father, John quickly settled in Los Angeles, a city whose prospects he considered promising. Even in Los Angeles, he felt the pangs of Americana's racial prejudice. He was most stunned when he was forced to worship in a segregated church, which was entirely foreign to his previous experiences and his understanding of Christian teaching. He spent the remainder of his life challenging the un-Christian practices he both endured and witnessed,chasting national and local religious leaders for extolling equality while remaining silent on racial violence.For the next couple of years He worked at various odd jobs. John formed connections with several prominent whites while working in business and real estate, finally setting his sights on dentistry as a career in which he could serve both whites and blacks and which would give him the prestige he sought.In the fall of 1904 he enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Dentistry.In his second year there he was the subject of a meeting of the school Dentistry's student body in which his classmates protested his enrollment. In spite of the adversity, in 1907 John became the second African American to pass the California dental licensing exam. He subsequently set up a private practice in Los Angeles,where he served whites and blacks,rich and poor, and became a leading figure in the African American community. While enrolled at USC, he had become a member of the Wesley Methodist congregation and met Vada Watson at a social function at the Azusa African Methodist Church.Vada was born and raised in Los Angeles and had attended USC as an undergraduate for three years. After an extended courtship, they married in 1913.Two years later Vada followed in her husband's footsteps and enrolled in USC School of Dentistry.In 1918 she became the school first African American female graduate and the state first black female dentist. John immediately set her up as a partner in his practice, and she quickly became a civic leader of local and national importance in her own right.In 1909 he applied for citizenship. In preparation for the exam, his studies of the American contrast between the lofty ideas stated in the nation's founding documents and the daily realities of white supremacy-the nation promised so much but delivered so little. This was, he noted, in stark contrast to his experiences in and knowledge of the British system, which promised little but did deliver on those promises. Along with his wife, John became a founding member of the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP in 1913 in a meeting held in their home. For more than a decade John served as the organization's vice president, and later he became executive director,eventually gaining an appointment to the National NAACP Board of Directors.He described the Los Angeles chapter as "militant" in its refusal to give into racial prejudice.Under his leadership the group pursued an agenda cenered on the integration of education and the city's playgrounds and on equal opportunities for black children in sports, extracurricular activities and medicine.He took an active role in politics and claimed to have voted in every election following his attainment of citizenship in 1910. His views determined his party affiliation, not the other way,around,and until the late 1920s he identified with the Progressives.He supported Hirham Johnson as governor of California and was a staunch advocate for Theodore Roosevelt and the Bull Moore Party,lobbying in support of the party's efforts throughout the black community and often canvassing for its candidates.With the onset of the Great Depression, John turned to the Democratic Party,which was in tune with many of his personal beliefs concerning government social problems.During the Depression he met George Creel,former director of the Committee on Public Information,who, along with Audrey Williams,head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration,called him to Washington to discuss racial issues.With the backing of Creel Williams appointed John as an adviser to the California state Emergency Relief Administration,where he worked to assure equality of status and appropriations for African Americans in the agency's programs. In 1934 he ran for the sixty second Assembly District seat in the Democratic primary,the apparent front-runner until the late entry of other black candidates.He was not able to carry the election with support from the African American community alone,and he lost to a twenty seven-year-old Democrat,AUGUSTUS FREEMAN HAWKINS,who courted not only the black constituents but also the whites and had a backing of the Reverend General Jealous Divine (more commonly known as FATHER DIVINE) and his Peace Mission Movement Followers.In 1962 Augustus became the first African American member of Congress from California.Nonetheless, John was not finish with politics.In 1936 he was the first African American in California elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention,held in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania.During World War 2,and the cold war, he used his stature to challenge claims that African Americans were Communists and to denounce the charges as fear-mongering and racist.Rumors of a massive black conversion to Communism as means of upsetting the social order were just one more way,he pointed out both his political campaigning and his later autobiography,for those who were seeking to maintain segregation and sustain entrenched racism to justify their beliefs.In an attempt to stop racial profiling by lenders in real estate transactions,the racial stratification of city neighborhoods,and the dearth of both public and private facilities in which blacks could dine,sleep, and congregate,he became a leading investor in black neighborhoods.In 1928 he borrowed heavily from his fellow black businessman Louis Blodgett of Liberty Savings and Loan Company to build the Somerville Hotel on the city's east side so that black workers and migrants to the city would have a place to stay.Almost immediately the site gained respect within the African American community and was chosen as the site for that year's NAACP National Convention.Despite his personal financial losses,which caused him to lose ownership of the Somerville Hotel (which became the Dunbar Hotel) during the Depression,the Forty-first Street and Central Avenue neighborhood in which he invested became the center of African American business in Los Angeles.His investments included the construction of apartments buildings on Berlin Avenue.(named the Vada Arms in honor of his wife) and loans to local black businesspeople. John worked tirelessly to etablish interracial congregations,eventually leaving Saint Philips Episcopal Mission after he helped organize the interracial Church of Christian Fellowship in 1948. He also played a signifficant role in shaping racial attitudess in postwar Los Angeles.As the first African American member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the city's police commission,he fought against the spread of racism and illegal practices as both whites and blacks migrated to California in increasing numbers.He worked with the agencies responsible for oversight of the federal Fair Employment Practices Act to see.