Jackson
Stitt Wilson (
1868 - 1942),
commonly known as J. Stitt Wilson, was a leading Christian Socialist American politician during the
first decades of the 20th Century. He is best remembered as the mayor of the
city of Berkeley, California from 1911 to 1913.
J. Stitt Wilson was born in Auburn, Ontario, Canada on March 19, 1868, the son of devout Methodist parents.[ J. Stitt Wilson, How I Became
a Socialist,] He emigrated to the U.S. in 1888, settling in Evanston, Illinois and attending Northwestern University,
working after graduation as a schoolmaster and for a law firm.[ J. Stitt Wilson, How I
Became a Socialist,] Wilson later decided to enter the Methodist ministry,
enrolling at the theological seminary at Northwestern. Following completion of
his schooling, Wilson worked for the next four years as a Methodist pastor and
social worker in nearby Chicago.[ J. Stitt Wilson, How I Became a Socialist,]
He
later recalled that the experience of these four years were "to me a
school out of which I came — a Socialist."[ J. Stitt Wilson, How I Became
a Socialist,]
“I have buried
children who did not have enough rags to cover them in their coffins. I have
slept with men to keep them from committing suicide. I have seen the great
armies of the unemployed live worse than animals, hungry in the streets, when
the masters of business could no longer profit from their labors.”
In 1897 he left the ministry and, with
his brother Ben (Benjamin Franklin Wilson) and a number of other like-minded
ministers, founded an organization called The Social Crusade to preach
socialism as the means to realize the vision of a truly Christian society. He
traveled throughout the Midwest and the West and decided to move to California.
He and his family left Chicago, took up residence in Berkeley in 1901, 
He traveled often to England
and Wales for the Social Crusade, living there for most of the period from 1906
to 1909. On his return to the U.S., the California branch of the Socialist
Party of America chose him as the candidate for Governor in 1910. A dynamic speaker, he gained a great deal of
publicity as he traveled around the state in a bright red automobile. Jackson Stitt Wilson is buried at
Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
J. Stitt Wilson – see Chapter 10 - THE INTERNATIONAL NEW THOUGHT ALLIANCE - A History of the
New Thought Movement by Horatio W. Dresser – 1919
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