Howard Thurman
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Howard Thurman (born 1900 in Daytona Beach, Florida - April 10, 1981 in Daytona Beach, Florida) was an author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader.
In 1923, Howard Thurman graduated from Morehouse College as valedictorian. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1925, after completing his study at the Colgate Rochester Theological Seminary (now Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School). He then decided to pursue further study as special student of philosophy in residence at Haverford College with Rufus Jones, a noted Quaker philosopher and mystic.
He served as dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University in the District of Columbia from 1932-1944. He later became the first Black dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University(1953-1965).
Thurman traveled broadly, heading Christian missions and meeting with world figures like Mahatma Gandhi. When Thurman asked Gandhi what message he should take back to America, Gandhi said he regretted not having made nonviolence more visible worldwide and suggested some American Black men would succeed where he had failed.
In 1944 Thurman left his prestigious tenured position at Howard to help the Fellowship of Reconciliation establish the first racially integrated, intercultural church in the United States, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California.
After leaving Marsh Chapel in 1965, Thurman continued his ministry as director of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust in San Francisco until his death in 1981.
Thurman was the author of 20 books of ethical and cultural criticism. The most famous of his works, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), deeply influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the modern Civil Rights Movement. (Thurman was in fact a classmate and friend of Martin Luther King Sr at Morehouse College. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Thurman while he attended Boston University and Thurman in turn mentored his former classmate's son and his friends).
Boston University currently houses the Howard Thurman Papers and the Sue Bailey Thurman Papers. However, recently the Howard Thurman Papers were secured by Morehouse College that they may be properly catalogued and presented.
Ebony magazine called Thurman one of the 50 most important figures in African American history, and Life rated him among the 12 best preachers in the nation.
Thurman was married twice. He had two children, Olive Thurman by his first wife, Kate Kelly Thurman (d. 1930 of tuberculosis) and Anne Spencer Thurman by his second wife, Sue Bailey Thurman.
A documentary of his life and work is currently being produced by an independent filmmaker.
[edit] Reference
Thurman, Howard. With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman Chicago:Harvest/HBJ Book, 1981. ISBN 0-15-697648-X
[edit] Quotations
"In the conflicts between man and man, between group and group, between nation and nation, the loneliness of the seeker for community is sometimes unendurable. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance." From The Search For Common Ground; An Inquiry Into The Basis Of Man's Experience Of Community.
For some unexplained reason, the following quote is widely and incorrectly attributed on the internet to Harold Thurman Whitman:
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
The actual author of this quote is Howard Thurman. Harold Thurman Whitman is purely fictional.
