Rev M. Weston II
*Dr. M. Moran Weston was born on this date in 1910. He was a Black minister, businessman, and activist.
From Tarboro, North Carolina, he was the son and grandson of Episcopal priests and studied under his mother, Catherine Perry Weston, at St. Luke's Parochial School in his hometown. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. John W. Perry, had founded this school in 1882. Weston attended St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating in 1928 as valedictorian. From there, he enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, graduating in 1930.
His career as a social activist and priest was centered in that city. During the 1930s, he studied at the General Theological Seminary, the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He received a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1934. He studied at the New School for Social Research from 1935-37 and received his Ph. D. in social history from Columbia University in 1954.
During these years, Weston participated in several student and community organizations that supported Negro interracial youth civic and labor causes. He worked as a caseworker and supervisor for the New York City Department of Social Welfare from 1935-41. In 1941, he began writing his column Labor Forum, which appeared in The Amsterdam News for almost ten years.
From the 1950s through the 1990s, Weston served on many boards, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Leake and Watts Children's Home, the New York City Mission Society, the Community Service Council of Greater New York, Columbia University, the Phelps-Stokes Fund, Mt. Sinai Medical School and Hospital, St. Augustine's College Raleigh NC, C. A. R. E., the Urban League of Westchester County the Foreign Relations Association, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Harlem Cultural Council and the Schomburg Corporation.
Weston's scholarly accomplishments include being a tenured Professor of Social History in the Department of African and African American Studies at the State University of New York at Albany from 1968 to 1977 and a Visiting Professor at the University of Nigeria in 1978. Other publications include Episcopalians at Work in the World 1952, his dissertation, Social Policy of the Episcopalian Church in the Twentieth Century 1964, Who Is This Jesus? 1973 and many articles and pamphlets.
Dr. M. Moran Weston had a lengthy and distinguished career in the Episcopal ministry and the fight for civil rights for Blacks and human rights for all. Milton Moran Weston died in May 2002.
