John H. Wheeler collection

John Hervey Wheeler (January 1, 1908-July 6, 1978) was a prominent African American bank president, civil rights lawyer, political activist, civic leader, educator, statesman, and philanthropist. He was also an accomplished violinist and avid tennis player. On Christmas Day 1935, Wheeler married the former Selena Lucille Warren (1912-2014), the daughter of Julia McCauley and Dr. Stanford L. Warren, a co-founder and one time president of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank (M&F Bank). They had two children: Julia and Warren Hervey Wheeler. John Hervey spent his professional and public life based in Durham, North Carolina and by the 1960s was the state's most influential black power broker; he was among the top civil rights leaders in the South. In 1929, he joined the M&F Bank and remained with the financial institution his entire career, rising from the position of bank teller to the presidency. He served in the latter capacity from August 1952 until his death. Wheeler was born on January 1, 1908 in Kittrell, North Carolina (Vance County) to John Leonidas and Margaret Hervey Wheeler. The Wheeler family came from the town of Nicholasville in Jessamine County, Kentucky.

John Hervey attended high school at Morehouse Academy (1921-1925) and then matriculated to Morehouse College (1925-1929), where he graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. degree in June 1929.

After graduation, John Hervey moved to Durham where he began his business career with the M&f Bank as a bank teller. The M&F Bank was established as a sister institution to the N.C. Mutual in 1908. He advanced through the company's ranks, becoming assistant cashier (1939), cashier (1940), then cashier and executive vice president (1944), before becoming bank president in 1952 at the age of forty-four, at the time the youngest black bank president in the country. In 1950, he became president of the National Negro Bankers Association (NNBA), the professional organization to the larger black banking industry; he served two terms with the NNBA. As M&F Bank president, Wheeler carried the banner as a community bank while also expanding its reach. He used banking to break down artificial barriers in order to open up total markets to black businesses and to create competition with white businesses to compel them to extend their policies to blacks. Under Wheeler's leadership, M&F Bank went from operating branches in just two cities (Durham and Raleigh), to also having a branch in Charlotte. During his tenure, the bank's assets went from just over $5 million when he took over, to $15 million in 1964, $21.5 million in 1970, and reached $41 million by 1976.

During World War II, Wheeler enrolled in law school at the North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) where, in 1947, he was among the first law school graduates. He had a strong commitment to black higher education in the South and in 1935 began his tenure on the boards of trustees at Morehouse College and Atlanta University. He became a political activist through his involvement with an organization known as the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (DCNA), a civil rights organization founded by black leaders in Durham in 1935. The DCNA was organized to "consider matters affecting the interest of the Negroes in the Community, to devise and sponsor programs designed to promote the welfare and to otherwise act in behalf of the Negro Citizens." Wheeler had stints as the DCNA's economic committee chairman and then education committee chairman (1944-1957) before taking over as the organization's chairman in 1957, a position he held until 1978. The position as DCNA chairman gained him a great deal of political influence as the organization helped African Americans gain a significant voting bloc in the city of Durham. Wheeler’s position as chairman also brought with it a high level of political clout with the state Democratic Party.

It was through the DCNA's education committee that Wheeler led a legal challenge toward school equalization in Durham and other cities across North Carolina. In 1951, a judge ruled in the case Blue, et. al. v. Durham Public School District (1951) that "plaintiffs have been, and are, discriminated against on account of their race and that they are entitled to injunctive relief." In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, Wheeler and other black leaders from across North Carolina called for immediate implementation. They ultimately filed several school desegregation suits before the decade ended. In 1956, he and several other Durham attorneys, including future CORE chairman Floyd B. McKissick, Sr. won the U.S. Supreme Court case Frasier v. Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina (1956), which led to the first three African American undergraduates to gain admission to the state's flagship institution.

John H. Wheeler's civil rights leadership reached its zenith during the 1960s. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO). In 1963, Wheeler became an incorporator of the North Carolina Fund, an anti-poverty agency established by the state’s governor Terry Sanford to help eradicate issues of poverty; the Fund became a model for Lyndon B. Johnson's national War on Poverty initiative. Wheeler joined the organization's board of directors and his bank became the repository for its accounts. In 1964, Sanford named Wheeler as a delegate to the Democratic Party’s national convention, the first African American from the state to do so. That same year, Wheeler became the first African American president of the Southern Regional Council (SRC), a civil rights organization founded in 1944 and based in Atlanta, Georgia. Beginning in May 1962, the SRC became the administrator over the Voter Education Project (VEP), which helped increase voter registration in the South leading up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the last decade of his life, John Hervey Wheeler continued his activism and refused to relinquish the bulk of his numerous responsibilities. During this same time, Wheeler was on the receiving end of many awards and accolades for his work in the field of civil rights. In 1967, his alma mater presented him with an honorary doctorate degree for his leadership as a member of the school's board of trustees. He had previously received honorary doctorates from Shaw University, Johnson C. Smith University, and Tuskegee University). In 1970, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Duke University, where former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford became president. That same year, he received the Frank Porter Graham Civil Liberties Award for his defense of freedom for all North Carolinians; the next year, North Carolina Central University bestowed upon him an honorary doctorate as well. On January 4, 1976, Morehouse College formally dedicated John H. Wheeler Hall as the school's Social Sciences and Business Administration Building.

Biographical note and timeline authored by Dr. Brandon K. Winford.

1908

Born January 1, 1908, Kittrell College Campus

1912

J. L. Wheeler moves his family to Atlanta, GA

1921

John H. Wheeler begins attending Morehouse Academy.

1925

Graduates from Morehouse Academy and enters Morehouse College.

1929

Receives A.B. Degree in Business Adminsitration and graduates Summa Cum Laude from Morehouse College. Moves to Durham, NC to work as a bank teller at Mechanics and Farmers Bank.

1931

Appointed as a board member of the Colored Library, later named the Stanford L. Warren Public Library

1933

Employed by the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company as Member of its Securities and Investment Committee.

1935

Becomes a member on the Board of Trustees at Atlanta University and Morehouse College. Marries the former Miss Selena L. Warren.

1936

First child, Julia Wheeler, was born on April 4.

1939

Elected as cashier of Mechanics and Farmers Bank.

1943

Begins attending night classes at the N.C. College Law School.

1944

Elected Vice-President of Mechanics and Farmers Bank. Becomes a member of the Durham Advisory Committee.

1947

Graduates law school from N.C. College with his LL.B Degree. Admitted to practice law in North Carolina.

1949

On May 18, 1949 black Durham school aged children and their parents file suit against the Durham Public School District alleging 480 that the “defendants are depriving the plaintiffs of their rights under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in that the Negro school children are being denied the equal protection of the law, on account of their race and color, by discriminating against them in the public school facilities. Wheeler argues case for Equalized Educational Facilities in Durham, NC along with attorney M. Hugh Thompson and law firm Hill, Martin and Robinson of Richmond, VA. NCC Law students file suit aimed at getting them admitted to the School of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, arguing that facilities there were better. Wheeler serves as a member of the suits legal counsel.

1952

Wheeler becomes President of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Durham, NC.

1955

Admitted to practice law in U. S. Supreme Court.

1957

Becomes Chairman of the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs (1957-1978). Father J. L. Wheeler dies on March 30, 1957.

1958

Becomes a member of the Durham Redevelopment Commission.

1961

Becomes member of President John F. Kennedy’s committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, headed by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1962

Holds Doctor of Humanities (L. H. D.) Honorary Degree conferred by Tuskegee Institute.

1963

Elected President of the Southern Regional Council (1964-1969).

Serves as representative of the secretary of commerce to the International Trade Fair in Tripoli.

Wheeler is appointed by Governor Sanford to serve on the North Carolina Fund’s Board of Directors.

1964

Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to a team of Americans visiting the Republic of Germany to review progress under the Marshall Plan.

Governor Terry Sanford names Wheeler as an at-large delegate from North Carolina to the National Democratic convention, the first black from North Carolina to be a delegate to the national convention.

1967

Becomes president of North Carolina Low Income Housing Development Corporation.

1968

President Johnson appoints Wheeler one of the incorporators of the National Housing Corporation authorized by the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968.

1970

Becomes a Board member of the Soul City Foundation, Inc.

1976

Sunday, January 4, 1976, formal dedication of John H. Wheeler Hall, Social Sciences 484 and Business Administration Building, is named in his honor.

1978

Dies on July 6, 1978. John H. Wheeler Foundation is established.