Episcopal bishop, was born John Melville Burgess in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the second son of Theodore Thomas Burgess, a train porter, and Ethel Inez Beverly, a kindergarten schoolteacher. He attended the public elementary school and Central High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In his boyhood he worked as a newsboy, took piano lessons, and was an acolyte at St. Phillip's Episcopal Church. In his teenage years he worked for a construction company, and while attending the University of Michigan he supported himself as a waiter and dishwasher. He graduated with a degree in Sociology in 1930.
Bishop Burgess was one of the first black graduates of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where, in 1934, he received his Master of Divinity degree. In 1938 he was called to St Simon Cyrene Episcopal Church in Lincoln Heights Ohio At an Episcopal Church Conference for Colored ...