Benjamin Elijah Mays (August 1, 1894 – March 28, 1984) was an American minister, educator, scholar, social activist and the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia from 1940 to 1967. Mays was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and was among the most articulate and outspoken critics of segregation before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.

Early life and education[link]

Benjamin Elijah Mays was born in 1894 in Ninety Six, South Carolina, the youngest of eight children; his parents were tenant farmers and former slaves. After spending a year at Virginia Union University, he moved north to attend Bates College in Maine, where he obtained his B.A. in 1920, then entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925 and a Ph.D. in the School of Religion in 1935. His education at Chicago was interrupted several times: he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1922 and accepted a pastorate at the Shiloh Baptist Church of Atlanta, then later taught at Morehouse and at South Carolina State College.

While in graduate school Mays worked as a Pullman Porter. He also worked as a student assistant to Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago and President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.

Career[link]

May's tomb in front of Graves Hall on Morehouse College's campus green.

While working on his doctorate, Mays and Joseph Nicholson published a study entitled The Negro's Church, the first sociological study of the black church in the United States. Four years later in 1938, he published The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature.

In 1926, he was appointed executive secretary of the Tampa, Florida Urban League. After two years at this post he became National Student Secretary of the YMCA.

Mays accepted the position of dean of the School of Religion at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1934. During his six years as dean, Mays traveled to India, where, at the urging of Howard Thurman, a fellow professor at Howard, he spoke at some length with Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1940, Mays became the president of Morehouse College. His most famous student there was Martin Luther King Jr. The two developed a close relationship that continued until King's death in 1968; As his lifelong mentor, Mays delivered the eulogy for King.

Mays emphasized two themes throughout his life: the dignity of all human beings and the gap between American democratic ideals and American social practices. Those became key elements of the message of King and the American civil rights movement. Mays explored these themes at length in his book Seeking to Be a Christian in Race Relations, published in 1957.

Mays gave the benediction at the close of the official program of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.^[1]

After his retirement in 1967 from Morehouse, Mays was elected president of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education, where he supervised the peaceful desegregation of Atlanta's public schools. He published two autobiographies, Born to Rebel (1971), and Lord, the People Have Driven Me On (1981).

Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta, The Mays Hall of Howard University (where the School of Divinity is housed), and the Benjamin Mays Center at Bates College are named in Mays' honor.

Mays died in Atlanta on March 28, 1984. He was entombed on the campus of Morehouse College. His wife Sadie is entombed beside him.

Mays was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Benjamin Mays on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[2]

The Mays family has initiated a petition to honor Dr. Mays’ legacy through a nomination for the high honor of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Suggested reading[link]

• Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel: An Autobiography (New York: Scribner, [1971]; reprint, with a revised foreword by Orville Vernon Burton, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003). ISBN 0-8203-2523-6.

External links[link]

• Benjamin Mays (profile by Roger Wilkins in June 2, 2003 issue of The Nation magazine on "American Rebels")

References[link]

• Article in the New Georgia Encyclopedia by Peter A. Kuryla.

Bennett in 1973

Lerone Bennett, Jr. (born 17 October 1928) is an African-American scholar, author and social historian, known for his revisionist analysis of race relations in the United States. His best-known works include Before the Mayflower and Forced into Glory.

Biography[link]

Bennett was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the son of Lerone Bennett, MR. and Alma Reed. When he was young, his family moved to Jackson, Mississippi.

Bennett graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He has noted this time was integral to his intellectual development. Mr. Bennett is also a distinguished member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

He is most notable for his decades as executive editor for Ebony Magazine, to which he was promoted in 1958. It has served as his base for the publication of a steady stream of articles on African-American history, some of them collected into books.

In addition Bennett has written several books, including numerous histories of the African-American experience. These include his first work Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, 1619-1962 and Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream. The former discusses the contributions of African Americans in the United States. The latter questions President Abraham Lincoln's role as the "Great Emancipator".

Marriage and family[link]

He married Gloria Sylvester on July 21, 1956. They had four children together: Alma Joy, Constance, Courtney, and Lerone III.

Legacy and honors[link]

• 2003 - Carter G. Woodson Lifetime Achievement Award from Association for the Study of African American Life and History^[1]
• 1978 - Literature Award of the Academy of Arts and Letters
• 1965 - Patron Saints Award from the Society of Midland Authors
• 1963 - Book of the Year Award from Capital Press Club

Honorary degrees from Morehouse College, Wilberforce University, Marquette University, Voorhees College, Morgan State University, University of Illinois, Lincoln College, and Dillard University.

Bibliography[link]

• Pioneers In Protest : Black Power U.S.A.
• The Shaping of Black America
• Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, 1619-1962 (1962)
• What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King
• Confrontation: Black and White (1965)
• Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction 1867-1877 (1967)
• Pioneers In Protest (1968)
• The challenge of Blackness (1972)
• Wade in the Water: Great Moments in Black History (1979)
• Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (2000), Johnson. Publ. Co.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bennett's biography
• Lerone Bennett, Jr.'s oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Booknotes interview with Bennett on Forced Into Glory, September 10, 2000.