Honoring Fred Lee Steen, Sr.

Fred Lee Steen Sr. ( January 21, 1929- March 11, 1998) was a talented and dedicated preacher, a gifted musician, an ardent advocate for social change, and a prominent community leader. He attended Phyllis Wheatley High School in San Antonio and went on to enroll at St. Philip's Junior College there in 1946 where he was the first student to be granted the A.S. Weiner Scholarship. In 1948 he graduated from St. Philip's and in 1949, enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee as a pre-med student. In his junior year he decided to pursue the Christian ministry instead of a career as a doctor. Upon earning his BA from Fisk in 1951, Steen became one of twenty-five students in the nation selected for work-study scholarships at the Oberlin College Seminary. During his first year, he became student pastor of the only congregation he would serve, the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Oberlin. In April of 1952, he was asked to serve as interim pastor at Mt. Zion. Shortly after, the church voted unanimously to appoint him regular pastor, and he was ordained to the Baptist ministry at Mount Nebo Baptist Church in Nashville. Steen distinguished himself as a promising student in the Graduate School of Theology, receiving the "Thomas W. Graham Homiletics Award" in 1953 for extraordinary gifts in the art of preaching. He received the Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1955 and the Master of Sacred Theology in 1957. He did post-graduate work at the Princeton Theological Seminary, and in 1974 obtained the Doctor of Ministry from the Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville. In 1967 Guadalupe College of Seguin, Texas conferred upon him an honorary doctorate in Divinity.