the first psychologist of African descent to work for the Veterans Administration, was born in Greenwood, South Carolina, the son of James Thomas Morton, Sr. and Sennie Morton, both natives of South Carolina. He was about eighteen months old when the family moved to Evanston, Illinois, where his father found work as a laborer for a gas company.
Morton graduated from Evanston High School in 1930, his photo appearing in the yearbook with classmates who for the most part self-identified as “white.” His teen years had included teaching classes, as a volunteer, on what was then known as Negro History, for church groups and in community settings. Active in Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, he also had a number of sports awards.
Morton completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Illinois in Champaign in 1934 setting aside the advice of a counselor that psychology was ...
