Author: Raymond Gavins

Gordon Blaine Hancock was a professor at Virginia Union University, pastor of Moore Street Baptist church in Richmond , and a leading spokesman for African American equality in the generation before the civil rights movement. Hancock co-founded the Richmond chapter of the Urban League and wrote newspaper columns for the Associated Negro Press, advising his mostly black audience on how to get by in tough times while still taking principled stands against segregation. His work with the Virginia Interracial Commission and the Southern Regional Council also suggested his willingness to be both outspoken and pragmatic in the midst of the fight against segregation—a fight, he wrote, that must be won “if the Negro is to survive.”