Alumni Profile
John Morton-Finney
1889-1998
The son of a former slave and one of seven children, John Morton-Finney was born on June 25, 1889 in Uniontown, Ky. When Morton-Finney's mother died, his father was unable to care for the large family and sent John to live with his grandfather in Missouri.
In 1911, Morton-Finney joined the U.S. Army and became part of the Buffalo Soldiers, a name given to an all-black cavalry regiment in pre-World War I days. Cheyenne warriors gave the regiment its name in 1867, a testament to the soldiers' fierce fighting abilities.
After serving in the Philippines, he returned to the states in 1914 and, two years later, completed a degree at Lincoln College in Missouri. He took a teaching job in a one-room schoolhouse. But when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, this Buffalo Soldier once again answered the call of his country.
With the war ended, he returned to civilian life and went back to teaching. Most would have settled in comfortably, but after four years Morton-Finney was ready for a fresh challenge. He came to Indiana University.
In 1925, Morton-Finney completed an IU master's degree in education and French. He taught languages in segregated schools for African-American students, ending up at the newly opened Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis. The school was intended to provide a model for the education of African American students.
Morton-Finney found a home as the head of the Attucks High School foreign languages department, the largest foreign languages department at any Indiana high school at the time. Morton-Finney taught Greek, Latin, German, Spanish, and French. An ordinary person might have been satisfied to stop there, but Morton-Finney was far from ordinary — or satisfied.
In 1944, Morton-Finney earned an L.L.B., and then in 1946, a J.D., both from IU. These were to be first of the five law degrees Morton-Finney earned, milestones in another remarkable career at which he would excel.
In 1991, Morton-Finney was inducted into the National Bar Association Hall of Fame in Washington, and in the same year, he visited with President George Bush in the Rose Garden of the White House. Morton-Finney reported that President Bush was the second U.S. president he had met — the first was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
President Bush cited Morton-Finney as a model for educating ourselves and others. "If he's still ready and willing to learn, so can we all be," the president said. "And if he's always looking for new ideas and new ways of thinking, so must the entire system of American education."
In his long and remarkable life, John Morton-Finney earned 11 degrees, his last at 75. At the age of 100, colleagues report that he still attended law school seminars "with the eagerness of a first-year student."
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