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Charles H. King Jr. (1925–1991)

A Pottsville-born civil-rights leader and conductor of racial-attitude seminars whose memoir is titled “Fire in My Bones.” Markers: ★ verified · ✔ confirmed · ✎ corrects a common error · ⚑ open/caution.

Charles H. King Jr. was born in Pottsville in 1925 and went on to a national career as a civil-rights leader, far from the small Black community where he was raised. ★ He grew up in integrated Pottsville schools, graduated Pottsville High School in 1943, and — by his own account in his memoir — was the son of a Great Migration refugee: his father, Rev. Charles H. King Sr., had fled Louisiana under an assumed name after a near-lynching, and became a Pottsville minister. ✔ ⚑ (The flight-from-Louisiana detail comes from King’s autobiography, not an independent record.)

He served in the segregated U.S. Navy in World War II — confined, like most Black sailors, to steward and mess duty — an experience he described as radicalizing him. ✔ He recalled enduring his Pottsville childhood “without any notable traumas induced by my blackness,” sheltered from Southern Jim Crow until the wartime Navy changed that. ★

King became a nationally known civil-rights leader and conductor of racial-attitude seminars, and president of the Urban Crisis Center in Atlanta — a role documented in the center’s archival records, independent of his hometown press. ★ He wrote the 1983 memoir Fire in My Bones. He died in 1991; the New York Times obituary, published September 17, 1991, gave his age as 66. ★ ⚑ (The exact date of death is not independently confirmed here, so this page records the year only.)

His fuller story sits within the African Americans of Schuylkill County profile.

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Frequently asked

Who was Charles H. King Jr.?
A civil-rights leader, minister, and author born in Pottsville in 1925. He grew up in the county's small, comparatively integrated Black community, graduated Pottsville High in 1943, and served in the segregated U.S. Navy in World War II. He became a nationally known conductor of racial-attitude seminars and executive director of the Urban Crisis Center in Atlanta, and wrote the 1983 memoir 'Fire in My Bones.' He died in 1991.
How is he connected to Schuylkill County?
He was born and raised in Pottsville and graduated from Pottsville High School, before leaving for the Navy and a national civil-rights career based in Gary, Indiana, and Atlanta, Georgia.