Fred E. Stephens was a pioneering religious leader and military chaplain who broke racial barriers during World War II. He became the first African American chaplain assigned to the Army Air Corps’ first African American service unit—a branch that would later evolve into the United States Air Force. Before World War II, African Americans were excluded from the Air Corps entirely. In 1943, Stephens was among just twenty-two African American officers commissioned after completing the ninth graduating class of the Army Chaplain School at Harvard University; the school’s inaugural class had graduated the previous year in August 1942.
Stephens was born in Tateville, Kentucky, in Pulaski County, to Sandy and Bertha A. Davis Stephens. Census records from 1910 show that his parents worked in agriculture, with Sandy listed as a farmer and Bertha as a farm laborer, while the family resided in Patesville, Hancock County, Kentucky. They later relocated to Evansville, Indiana, where Stephens completed high school. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University in 1932 and later received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Shorter College in 1942. His ministry included pastoral appointments at African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches in Atlanta, Georgia; Tucson, Arizona; and Columbia, Missouri.
Beyond his pastoral and military service, Stephens was deeply engaged in civic and civil rights work. He served on the national board of the NAACP and chaired the organization’s Kansas City, Missouri, branch. His professional and community affiliations also included the YMCA, the Masonic Order, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, and he held a leadership role as vice president of the Young Democratic League.
Stephens was active in media and public discourse as well, contributing articles to newspapers and journals and working as a radio announcer in both Arizona and Missouri. In the late 1950s, he served as pastor of Bethel AME Church in Kansas City. During the 1970s, he led the First AME Church in Los Angeles, California. In 1975, he officiated the marriage of Ralph Russell and Debraca Denise Foxx, the daughter of entertainer Redd Foxx. Reverend Fred E. Stephens passed away in Los Angeles in April 1985.
Sources for further research include The Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, compiled by Bishop R. R. Wright; P. D. Davis’s article “22 Receive Commission as Chaplain” (Plaindealer, July 9, 1943); and a photograph and profile of Rev. Stephens published in The Crisis, April 1958.
SOURCE: https://nkaa.uky.edu/nkaa/items/show/2483
