Wilson Fallin Jr

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Wilson Fallin Jr (born c. 1943) is a pastor and former educator.

Fallin is the first of three children born to Wilson Fallin Sr and his wife, Ethel. He grew up in Bessemer. His father taught social science at Dunbar High School and served as pastor of New Jerusalem Baptist Church.

Fallin graduated from Dunbar and studied history at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He was awarded a partial scholarship and also worked as a clerk at a shoe store to support himself. He was influenced by then-college president Benjamin Mays and was able to sit in on philosophy classes taught by Martin Luther King Jr.

Fallin went on to earn a master's in divinity at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, and was awarded a fellowship to continue his studies at Emory University's Candler School of Theology.

Fallin accepted the pastorship of Bessemer's New Zion Baptist Church in 1967. Under his leadership the congregation was active in supporting civil rights. Asbury Howard of the Bessemer Voters League hosted a rally with Texas State Senator Barbara Jordan at the church that November. During the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's 1968 "Poor People's Campaign" Martin Luther King Jr spent a week in Bessemer with Fred Shuttlesworth and other SCLC leaders, enjoying dinners at Fallin's home. The campaign was cut short when James Earl Ray murdered King in Memphis, Tennessee that April.

Fallin also served on the board of trustees for Birmingham Baptist College. During a financial crisis stemming from a fire in the college's administration building in December 1970, Fallin was asked to lead the school as president. He was able to resolve the college's debts and initiated the modification of its name to Birmingham Baptist Bible College in 1977.

From 1978 to 1980 Fallin also taught Bible and philosophy courses at Miles College in Fairfield. In 1983 he moved to Dallas County to serve as president of Selma University. He stepped down in 1988 and accepted the pastorship of Oak Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Brighton. As pastor he led a $1.1 million building campaign for a new sanctuary in 2001. He stepped down in a dispute with the congregation in 2015.

Fallin also returned as president of the Birmingham Baptist Bible College and led its 1994 merger with Easonian Baptist Seminary to become the Birmingham-Easonian Baptist Bible College. Fallin returned to college himself, earning a master's in history at the University of Montevallo in 1989 and a PhD at the University of Alabama in 1992. He has taught at Birmingham-Easonian Baptist Bible College and the University of Montevallo, and also as an adjunct professor at Samford University's Beeson Divinity School. He served as the University of Montevallo's director of minority affairs from 1988 to 1999 and continued to teach history classes there until retiring in 2020.

Fallin was presented with a Thomas Jefferson Award by the Jefferson County Historical Association in 1997. In 2021 the University of Montevallo Board of Trustees established the "Dr Wilson Fallin Jr Lecture Series", and then a year later renamed the former University on Main, housing the school's behavioral and social sciences programs, as "Dr Wilson Fallin Jr Hall." In April 2023 Birmingham-Easonian Baptist Bible College named its administration building for Fallin.

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