Coan, Josephus Roosevelt, 1902-2002

Josephus Roosevelt Coan (1902-2002), African American clergyman, missionary, and educator. He served the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.) as a teacher, pastor, missionary, and acting Bishop in South Africa and then pursued a lengthy career as a pastor and a scholar and teacher of Christian education, based mainly in Atlanta, Georgia. Born, November 26, 1902, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Coan earned a B.A. from Howard University (1930), a B.D. (1933) and an M.A. in Christian Education from Yale University (1934), and a Ph.D. from Hartford Seminary Foundation (1961). From 1934 to 1938, Coan taught at Morris Brown College and Turner Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia. Coan travelled to the British colony of South Africa in 1938 to help establish the R. R. Wright School of Religion on the campus of Wilberforce Institute in Evaton, Transvaal Province. In 1940, he was selected to become the first Black superintendent of Wilberforce Institute. From 1940-1948, he was also the acting African Methodist Episcopal bishop over a region that included the areas covered by the modern nations of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and Malawi. After returning to the United States and settling in Georgia, Coan pursued a career as a teacher, scholar and pastor. He worked for Morris Brown College and the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta until his retirement in 1976.