Jesse E. Moorland

Who was Jesse E. Moorland?

Jesse Edward Moorland was a black minister, community executive, and civic leader.

Born in Coldwater, Ohio, he was the only child of a farming family. Moorland attended Northwestern Normal University in Ada, Ohio. Then he moved to Washington D. C., where he attended the Theological department of Howard University and earned his masters degree in 1891. He was ordained a Congressional minister. That same year he was hired as secretary of the Washington D. C. branch of the YMCA.

Moorland devoted himself to black social organizations, such as the National Health Circle for Colored People, as important for building community strength. In 1914, Kelly Miller, a leading African-American intellectual, persuaded Moorland to donate his large private library on blacks in Africa and in the United States as the foundation for a proposed "Negro-Americana Museum and Library" at Howard University. This collection formed the foundation of the Moorland–Spingarn Research Center. Together with historian Carter G. Woodson, he co-founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915.

Moorland was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.