Hope, John (1868-1936), was an African American educator. In 1906, he became the first black president of what is now Morehouse College in Atlanta. The previous four presidents of this historically black college had been white.
Hope headed Morehouse until 1929, when he became president of Atlanta University. That same year, he helped found the Atlanta University Center, which consisted of three schools—Atlanta, Morehouse, and Spelman College. Hope encouraged African Americans to attend college rather than vocational school, a policy at odds with that of the leading black educator Booker T. Washington, who believed blacks could benefit as much from job training as from a college education.
Hope was born on June 2, 1868, in Augusta, Georgia, the son of a white father and a black mother. John Hope received his B.A. degree from Brown University. In 1898, he became a professor of classics at Atlanta Baptist College, whose name was changed to Morehouse College in 1913. Later, Hope worked in France for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), trying to improve conditions for black soldiers during World War I (1914-1918). He was also a member of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. After Hope’s death, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awarded him the Spingarn Medal.
