Sullivan, Leon Howard, 1922-2001

Civil rights leader, entrepreneur, and minister.

Leon Howard Sullivan (1922-2001) was born to Charles and Helen Sullivan of Charleston, West Virginia on October 16, 1922. After graduating from West Virginia State College in 1943, Sullivan moved to New York City to attend Union Theological Seminary. Sullivan had been ordained as Baptist minister at the age of 18. He attended the Seminary for 2 years, then Columbia University where he received a Masters in Religion in 1947. While in New York, Sullivan married his wife, Grace, in 1945. He served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in South Orange, New Jersey from 1945 to 1950. In 1950, Sullivan and his wife moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he would begin his 38 year tenure as pastor of the Zion Baptist Church. In the late 1950s, Sullivan organized a boycott of Philadelphia businesses that were not hiring African Americans. In 1964, Sullivan created the Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC) of America, whose mission was to provide practical job training to disadvantaged African Americans in Philadelphia. The organization has grown to include sixty affiliated programs in thirty states. Sullivan also founded OIC International in 1969. In 1971, Sullivan was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of the General Motors Corporation, becoming the first African American to serve on the board of a major corporation. Beginning in the late 1970s, Sullivan became active in the movement to end apartheid in South Africa. In 1977, he developed the Sullivan Principles, a set of guidelines for companies with business ties to South Africa that encouraged equitable treatment and pay for black South African workers. In 1991, the first Leon H. Sullivan Summit was held in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire with the mission to bring together African American and African leaders and work to improve the economic and social conditions of all Africans. Sullivan died on April 24, 2001 in Scottsdale, Arizona.