"John Quincy Adams" (May 4,1848-September 4,1922)

He was born free in Louisville,Kentucky,to the Reverend Henry & Margaret Priscilla

Adams (nee Corbin).John was of four children.John attended private academies in Fond du Lac,Wisconsin,and Yellow Springs Ohio,graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio.He then moved to Arkansas where he taught in schools in Little Rock before taking a position assisting his uncle,Joseph C.Corbin,who was Arkansas`Superintendent of Public Instruction.Between 1870 & 1876 John was involved in Republican Party politics and served as Engrossing Clerk in the state senate as Deputy Commissioner of Public Works.Between 1876& 1886 he lived in Louisville,Kentucky,where he taught school and was engaged in the Republican Party politics at the state and national level,serving as Ganger and Storekeeper in the United States Revenue Service.John lost that appointment with the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884.During that period,he and his brother Cyrus Field Adams published the weekly Louisville Bulletin between 1879 & 1886.In 1880 John was responsible for
convening the the first Colored National Press Convention and was elected its first president,a position that he held for two years.In 1886 he sold the Bulletin and moved to St.Paul,Minnesota,where he became associate editor,editor and later owner of The Western Appeal between 1886 & 1922.John transformed it into a national newspaper with offices in Minneapolis,Chicago,St.Louis,Dallas,and Washington,D.C.,and he changed its name to The Appeal in 1889 to reduce its identity as a Midwestern press.His newspaper in St.Paul became the center of political activism in the upper Midwest,challenging the "color line" that continued in
Minnesota after the Civil War.He partnered with Frederick L.McGhee,a young African American lawyer from Chicago who lived to St.Paul in 1889.The two instrumental in
initiating legal challenges to racial discrimination in Minnesota and in passing legislation guaranteeing civil rights.He and Frederick were founders of Minnesota's Protective and Industrial League,which affiliated with the Afro-American League in 1890 and later the Afro-American Council.His paper remained a publication of the Republication of the Republican Party,even when Frederick had abandoned it.John
was consistent supporter of Booker T.Washington and the Tuskegee Model at the
conventions of the Afro-American Council held in St.Paul in 1902 and in Louisville
in 1903.That support damaged John's reputation within that group allying itself to the Niagara Movement and later the NAACP.John married Ella Bell Smith of St.Paul on May 4,1892.They had four children (Adina,Margaret,Edythell,& John,Jr).John died
in St.Paul,Minnesota when struck by a car when he was in the process of boarding a streetcar.