John Anderson Lankford

John Anderson Lankford was born on the fourth of December 1874 near Potosi, in Washington County, Missouri, the son of Anderson Lankford and Nancy Bass — both of whom had been enslaved in that county before emancipation. Out of that hard inheritance rose a young man of restless learning. He studied at Lincoln Institute and at Tuskegee, took up architectural and mechanical drawing through the International Correspondence School, and earned a Bachelor of Science from Shaw University in 1898, later gathering honorary science degrees and, in time, a law degree from Frelinghuysen University.

In 1902 Lankford came to Washington to complete the design and supervise the construction of the True Reformer Building on U Street — a landmark raised by and for Black hands. He settled in the capital and built a practice serving the African American community and the wider region, designing schools, churches, offices, and homes. In 1908 he was named supervising architect of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and from that seat he shaped a great programme of AME sanctuaries across the United States and as far as South Africa.

His standing was not merely artistic but historic. When the District of Columbia established its first licensing board, Lankford in 1924 became the first African American architect licensed in the capital — two years after he had won the same distinction in Virginia in 1922. Widely called the "dean of Black architecture," he also served as president of the National Technical Association.

Lankford believed a building could be an argument for the dignity of his people, and he built that argument in brick and stone. He died at his Washington home on the second of July 1946. May the houses of worship and learning he raised keep telling, generation upon generation, the truth of his worth.