John Wesley Dobbs | |
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| Born | March 26, 1882 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | August 30, 1961 (79 years old) |
| Alma mater | Morehouse College |
| Occupation(s) | Civil and political leader |
| Organization | Atlanta Negro Voters League |
| Known for | Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement |
| Political party | Republican[1] |
| Children | 6, includingIrene,Mattiwilda andJosephine |
| Relatives | Maynard Jackson (grandson) |
John Wesley Dobbs (March 26, 1882 – August 30, 1961) was anAfrican-American civic and political leader inAtlanta, Georgia. He was often referred to as the unofficial "mayor" ofSweet Auburn, the spine of the black community in the city.
Dobbs co-founded theAtlanta Negro Voters League with civil rights attorneyA. T. Walden, leading voter registration efforts that registered 20,000 African Americans in Atlanta from 1936 to 1946. This new political power helped gain the hiring in 1948 of the first eight African-American police officers in Atlanta, the same year that the federal government began to integrate the armed services. In 1949, the city finally installed lighting along Sweet Auburn, the main retail street of the African-American community.
Dobbs was born and grew up in Atlanta, where he attended segregated public schools. An African-American, he also had European ancestry, as his maternal grandfather was a white slave-owner who enslaved his maternal grandmother, and his paternal great-grandfather was a white slave-owner who enslaved his paternal great-grandmother. He was a voracious reader and studied atMorehouse College. He attended for two years but never graduated because he had family obligations to care for his mother. He passed a civil service exam and became a railway mail clerk for thePost Office in 1903, a position he held for 32 years.[2]
Dobbs married Irene Ophelia Thompson in 1906. They had six daughters together, all of whom graduated fromSpelman College. One daughter,Mattiwilda Dobbs, became a notable opera singer based in Europe, while daughterJosephine Dobbs Clement was later elected to the city board of education inDurham, North Carolina (she led integration and discussions about race), andIrene Dobbs Jackson was a professor of French at Spelman and integrated Atlanta's public libraries.[3]
Dobbs became a member of thePrince Hall Masons in 1911. In 1932, he was elected Grand Master of thePrince Hall Masons (a post he held for the rest of his life). Believing thatenfranchisement was the key to overcomingsegregation, Dobbs started a voter registration drive in 1936 with a goal of registering 10,000 black voters in Georgia. That year, Dobbs founded theAtlanta Civic and Political League, and in 1946, along withA. T. Walden, he co-founded theAtlanta Negro Voters League. During the 1930s and 1940s, laws keeping blacks from voting, by raising barriers to voter registration or to voting in primaries, were found by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional. Between 1936 and 1946, 20,000 African-American voters were registered to vote in Atlanta for the first time. With the power of the black vote behind him, Dobbs convinced Atlanta mayorWilliam B. Hartsfield to integrate Atlanta's police force in 1948; the first eight black officers were hired. The next year, 1949, the mayor ordered installation of gas lights alongAuburn Avenue, the spine of the black retail district.[4]
In 1948, when Dobbs was 66, he accompaniedRay Sprigle, aPulitzer Prize-winning reporter for thePittsburgh Post-Gazette, when the reporter disguised himself as a light-skinned black man and traveled for 30 days in the Deep South. They had coordinated the trip with theNAACP and kept Dobbs' role secret, as it was dangerous to challenge theJim Crow customs and color line. Dobbs, who passed the 61-year-old newspaperman off as a cousin from Pittsburgh doing field work for the NAACP, was Sprigle's guide, host and mentor. Sprigle's 21-part syndicated newspaper series, entitledI Was a Negro in the South for 30 Days, shocked the white North and started the first debate in the national media (print and radio) about the future of legalized segregation. The series was turned into a 1949 book,In the Land ofJim Crow. Dobbs' role was not revealed to the general public until 1998 by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Bill Steigerwald.[5]
John Wesley Dobbs died on August 30, 1961, aged 79, the same week that the Atlanta city schools were desegregated.[2]
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