SHORTER, James Alexander, A. M. E. bishop, born in Washington, D. C., 4 February, 1817. He is of African descent. After entering the itinerant ministry of the African Methodist Episcopal church in April, 1846, he held a pastorate in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1863, and organized the women of his church into bands for the relief of the freedmen that flocked thither. He was elected bishop in 1868, and sent more fully to organize the church in the extreme southwest, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. He was one of the delegates to the Methodist ecumenical council in London, England, in 1881, and continued his travels into France and Switzerland. As president of the missionary society of his church, he has succeeded in opening the work in Hayti and Africa, whither missionaries have been sent.