John Williams Fitzgerald (1907- ) spent the majority of his adult life as a professional educator. He served both as a seminary teacher in the LDS Church, and as a principal in Salt Lake County's Granite School District. He also served professionally as a chaplain in the United States Army during World War II and continued this service with the Utah National Guard until his retirement in 1967. During his adult life Fitzgerald was a student of history and of the society that he lived in. Fitzgerald was active in social issues from the 1960s to the 1980s. He became both an informed and a critical observer of the LDS Church's position on not allowing African-American men into the priesthood. Fitzgerald was excommunicated from the LDS Church in the early 1970s for this criticism.

John W. Fitzgerald is the grandson of John Fitzgerald and Sarah Anne Williams Fitzgerald, among the first pioneers to Utah in 1847. John W. Fitzgerald’s father, William Commodore Fitzgerald also worked for the Draper Sunday School. John W. Fitzgerald attended Maeser Academy in Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1920s and later the University of Utah.