SEVENTH GENERATION

2239. Alvin Clay ADAMS Jr. was born on 30 Apr 1937 in Morgan County, Ohio at the foot of Carr Hill. He was a publisher and reporter. His professional career has included work as a reporter and editor; and then public relations for labor unions, federal and state government, and a public utility.

He worked for the Chicago Defender from the fall of 1959 to 1961. Then he became an associate editor of Jet magazine, published in Chicago by Johnson Publishing Company. In November, 1965, he was employed as a public information officer in the Chicago regional office of the federal Office of Economic Opportunity. In April, 1966 he joined the public relations staff of the United Auto Workers (UAW) labor union in Detroit.

During 1972 he accepted a position with the newly-formed public relations firm of Walsh/Martin Communications, Inc. (Joe Walsh and Ray Martin), which was headquartered in Washington, D. C. He was located in Springfield, Illinois and assigned to service an account with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO. In this capacity he worked briefly on union organizing campaigns in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; Omaha, Nebraska; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Columbus, Ohio; New Harmony, Indiana; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Springfield, Illinois. Ten months after this arrangement began, he was employed directly on the payroll of the union.

In October of 1974 he began work in Springfield for an Illinois State agency, the Governor's Office of Manpower and Human Development, assigned to the division that provided assistance to the local anti- poverty agencies (the state counterpart of the 1965 federal job program).

In September of 1977 he was employed as media relations coordinator for Illinois Power Company, in Decatur, Illinois and later became media relations supervisor.

Alvin C. Adams was born on State Route 377 between Chesterhill and Sharpsburg. Less than a year after his birth, his father died. His mother remarried, to Clarence Nichols. Through his childhood, Alvin was known by the nickname "June bug." While employed as a writer he used the by-line Alvin C. Adams. When employed later in public relations he used the name Al Adams.

Alvin Adams' childhood was spent at various locations in Athens County, Ohio, except for two school terms (1947-'48) in the state capital, Columbus. For details of his life through graduation from high school, see Hold Tight to the Hames, Episodes of Life in Athens County, written in 1983.

He was married to Ada M. WOODSON (daughter of Hope A. WOODSON and Grace Vivian WHITEFIELD) on 9 Jul 1960 in Zion Baptist Church, Athens County, Ohio. Alvin C. Adams was married to Ada Mae Woodson, second daughter of Hope and Grace (Whitfield) Woodson of Nelsonville, Ohio, at Zion Baptist Church in Athens, Ohio. The Reverend William Strickland officiated. The two met in Nelsonville the spring of 1957 before Ada enrolled at Ohio University. Ada M. WOODSON was born about 1937. Alvin Clay ADAMS Jr. and Ada M. WOODSON had the following children:

4491 i. Amelia Marie ADAMS was born on 28 Oct 1965 in Lying-in Hospital, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. Her given names are for Mrs. Amelia P. Boynton, of Selma, Alabama whom the parents met during the civil rights movement in 1963 (Mrs. Boynton was named godmother), and Ethel Marie McCullough, an Ohio University classmate of the parents and originally from Cleveland, Ohio. Miss McCullough, a speech therapist, later was employed in Grand Rapids and then Detroit, Michigan. She was educated. Graduating in the upper one percent of her class academically at MacArthur High School in Decatur, Ill. Marie Adams enrolled in the fall of 1983 at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Smith, with high honors and the Samuel Bowles Prize for the best paper on a sociological subject (co-honor), in 1987 with a degree in anthropology.

4492 ii. Alvin Clay ADAMS III was born on 2 Sep 1968 in Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan. Known as Clay, he uses the signature A. Clay Adams, III. He graduated from MacArthur High School in Decatur, Illinois, in 1986 and enrolled at the University of Illinois in the fall of 1987.