Walls, William Jacob, 1885-1975

Forty-second bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Bishop William J. Walls, African American churchman and author, graduated from Livingstone College and Hood Seminary. He did graduate work at Columbia University, and received an advanced degree from the University of Chicago.

Walls was an active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, originally formed in 1796 in New York City in response to discrimination against blacks in the regular Methodist Church. Walls' home congregation was Thomas Memorial AME Zion in Watertown, New York, long known as an anti-slavery church; notable members included Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Katherine Harris,Jermaine Loguen, and Frederick Douglass.

Among his other duties, Walls served as senior bishop and secretary of the Board of Bishops and as chairman of the Board of Christian Education, Home and Church, and participated in Christian Education conventions on the denominational, national, international, and world levels. He was a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, the executive committee of the World Council of Methodism, and the General Assembly and General Board of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, and was the ecumenical spokesman for Zion Methodism.

In addition to his church activities, Wall was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving on the Board of Directors and as vice president. He also found time to write, producing a biography of Joseph Charles Price, founder and first president of Livingstone College, and a definitive history of AME Zion entitled The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church: Reality of the Black Church (1974).