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Biography

Born and raised in Danville, Illinois, he moved to Burlington to pastor a church. He is the pastor of the St. John AME Church in Burlington and the St. James AME church in Monmouth, Illinois. As president of the Burlington Branch of the NAACP he urges students and adults to work together toward community improvement, social responsibility, and always, to make a difference.

Transcript

Jasmine: Hello, my name is Jasmine Dameron and this is John Herring. I am involved in the Upward Bound Program at Burlington Community High School and I would like to ask you a few questions about your life. Where were you born?

John Herring: I was born in Danville, Illinois.

Jasmine: How long have you lived in Illinois?

John Herring: I moved, I lived in Illinois up until about seven years ago.

Jasmine: Where do you live now?

John Herring: I live here in Iowa, Burlington, Iowa.

Jasmine: What brought you to Burlington, Iowa?

John Herring: I came here to pastor a church, St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Jasmine: Describe the role of the African American Church in your community.

John Herring: I think the church needs to be involved with the entire community so that people can benefit from not only the religious part that the church has to offer but the other activities such as political and social that might affect the community.

Jasmine: What organizations have you been involved and why?

John Herring: Well, I’ve been involved with a lot of organizations. Before I came to Burlington, I was on the School Board in Danville for six years. I was involved with PTA when my children was in school. Presently, I’m the president of the NAACP, the Burlington branch, and I’m very involved in that and very involved with the school track, the High School Track Program here in Burlington so I do get involved as much as I can.

Jasmine: That’s good. Have you been involved in any Civil Rights Organizations?

John Herring: Yeah, like I said, the NAACP. I was involved with that even before I came to Burlington. One thing that we did in Danville is, we were, the NAACP itself was very involved with the King Day celebration. We had a big celebration each year. We were responsible for changing a lot of the way the government was ran in Danville, Illinois. We were responsible for getting a thoroughfare named after the late Dr. Martin Luther King when I was in Danville.

Jasmine: That’s good. Why did you choose to get involved in organizations?

John Herring: Well, to make a difference. I think everybody needs to be involved to some degree in making a difference where they are and the things that are around them. A lot of people take the attitude that what they do won’t matter, but we can make a difference if we just work where we are and do what we can to better those things that are around us.

Jasmine: How has the Civil Rights Movement affected you?

John Herring: Well, I’ve seen the difference in the last twenty years. I remember growing up, I didn’t grow up in the South, but I did grow up during some segregated moments in Danville. I do remember places I couldn’t get served. I remember having to go to the back door of the theater in order to go into the theater, sitting in the balcony, you couldn’t sit in the front. So I’ve seen changes in that way. I’ve also seen changes in people being hired for their merit and not just for what they look like. I think we’ve come a long way, you know, with a black President elected last year. We still got a long way to go, but I think we’ve come a long way and I want to be part of making that difference.

Jasmine: In the past, have you tried to do anything to stop the segregation?

John Herring: Like I said, as president of the NAACP here in Burlington, we’re trying to get people involved with our organization and getting our organization involved and collaborating with other organizations to make the city, to make the school system, to make things around us even better. Like I said, we’ve come a long way as far as segregation and racism but we’ve still got some things that we need to overturn and we can’t do that alone.

Jasmine: How did your family feel about you getting involved?

John Herring: I think it made a difference in the way my children think. Mt youngest will be twenty-one here in a couple of weeks and I can see a difference in their attitude toward things and their willingness to be involved in the things around them to make a difference. At the time I did involve them and they became a part of what I was a part of and we did things as a family. We all need, black and white, we all need to stay involved, we all need to do what we can do to make a difference because the history of black, African Americans is the history of the world. A lot of times we separate the two or we leave out one and try to tell the history one sided, but it’s all one history and we all can make that history happen.