Dr. Virgil A. Wood
Dr. Wood, Church leader, educator, and civil rights activist has committed much of his life’s work to the struggle for economic and spiritual development among the nation’s disadvantaged.
Ordained as a Baptist Minister in his late teens, Wood has served Churches for over 50 years, in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Virginia. During his Pastorate in Lynchburg, Virginia, he became actively involved with the Civil Rights movement, setting up the Martin Luther King work there as the Lynchburg Improvement Association, a local unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1963 to 1970, Wood led the Blue Hill Christian Center, of Boston’s Roxbury community, as its Pastoral Director, and head of the Mass. Unit, SCLC. He served with Martin Luther King, Jr., as a member of his National Executive Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the last ten years of Dr. King’s life and work, and Coordinated the State of Virginia in the Historic March on Washington, August 28, 1963.
A 1956 graduate of Andover Newton Theological School with a Master of Divinity degree, he received his Doctorate in Education from Harvard University, in 1973, where two of his major Professors were Organization Development Expert Dr. Chris Argyris, and Achievement Motivation Expert Dr. David McClellan. As an educator, he served as Dean and Director, the African American Institute, and Associate Professor of Northeastern University at Boston, and had been a Professor at Virginia Seminary and College, in Lynchburg, and a visiting Lecturer, Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.
Dr. Wood has many notable accomplishments. As an administrator for Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, founded by Dr. Leon H. Sullivan, a job training organization serving disadvantaged and under skilled Americans of all races, he assisted in founding and establishing 13 OIC centers in eight southern states, and in Boston, Massachusetts. Wood also served as a panelist and member of three White House Conferences under the Johnson, Nixon, and Carter Administrations.
Among Wood’s publications are INTRODUCTION TO BLACK CHURCH ECONOMIC STUDIES, (Sparks Press: Raleigh, N. C., 1974), ORIGININATOR and contributing editor, THE JUBILEE BIBLE, (American Bible Society, New York,) 1999, and 2012; and author, “IN LOVE WE STILL TRUST: Lessons We Learned From Martin Luther King, Jr, and Sr., 2020.He has combined his dual career in Church Leadership and Education with a life-long commitment to community development as economic and spiritual transformation. A former member of the Economic Development Task Force of the National Conference of Black Mayors, he also has served his national denomination as the first Chairman of its Economic Development Commission, the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and as a consultant to the National Business League during the presidency of Dr. Berkley Burrell. He is currently working to shape functional and sustainable Faith Inspiring Initiatives of Beloved Community birthing Beloved Economies
Dr. Wood is Pastor Emeritus of Rhode Island, Pond Street Baptist Church, which he served from 1983 to 2005, and previously from 1955 to 1958. From 2017 to 2029, Ridenour Faculty Fellow, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Virginia Tech, along with his alma mater, Virginia Union University, leading in developing BELOVED COMMUNITY INITIATIVE, now to be offered across the Nation, and As co-Founder of JUBILEE NATIONAL COLLABORATIVE, involved in Public-Private ventures for REVERSING THE JAIL TRAIL AND JUMPSTART VIABLE ECONOMIC-EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVES, solving the Root Causes and reversing the Poverty Society of Nations