Civil Rights activist and founding pastor of Vernon Park Church of God, the Rev. Dr. Claude Wyatt Jr. died April 11 at his home. He was 88 years old.
Civil Rights activist and founding pastor of Vernon Park Church of God, the Rev. Dr. Claude Wyatt Jr. died April 11 at his home. He was 88 years old.
The Terrell, Tex. native came to Chicago at age 6 and served the community for more than 44 years. He was called into the ministry in the early 1950s and involved his ministry in education and training, social action and a caring outreach which gave itself to heavy counseling and guidance services to families, marriages, youth and especially those whose lives were in economic and social despair. Wyatt helped rehabilitate many with alcohol and drug addictions, and worked with youths in trouble and with gangs.
Beyond his local confines, the reverend, at the request of the Ministry in Kingston, Jamaica’s Capital, serves in a series of Evangelical and Social Outreach Ministries. During the civil rights movement in the South, he was an ally to the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and served as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Chicago director of the Ministerial Leadership Program. Wyatt helped organize Operation Breadbasket, now the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and also was a board member of People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH), a constituent for Urban Ministries for the Church of God in Anderson, Ind. He was also a member of the Chicago Urban League and the Chicago Baptist Institute. He also served as a delegate to the World Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. He retired from the pulpit in 2000.
Wyatt is survived by his wife of 69 years, the Rev. Dr. Addie Wyatt, son Claude III and many grandchildren.
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