Background
The fourth of seven children, Walter Fauntroy was born and raised in Washington, D.C.. His mother, Ethel Fauntroy, was a homemaker. His father, William T. Fauntroy, Sr., was a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. Walter grew up in the Shaw community in Northwest Washington, then a poverty-stricken area plagued by crime, drugs, and unemployment. He found a safe haven in the New Bethel Baptist Church just a few blocks from his home.
He graduated second in his class at Washington's all-black Dunbar High School in 1951, and the members of his church held fund-raising dinners to provide him with a college scholarship. When he graduated from Dunbar in 1952, his church gave him enough money to pay for his first year at Virginia Union University in Richmond. He pledged Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity while at Virginia Union, and he graduated from that institution in 1955, with honors, and then earned a degree in divinity from Yale.
He is married to the former Dorothy Simms of Petersburg, Virginia. They have two children: Marvin Keith and Melissa Alice.
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