Benjamin Mays

Benjamin Elijah Mays (August 1, 1894 – March 28, 1984) was an American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. Mays taught and mentored many influential activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, and Donn Clendenon, among others. His rhetoric and intellectual pursuits focused on Black self-determination. Mays' commitment to social justice through nonviolence and civil resistance were cultivated from his youth through the lessons imbibed from his parents and eldest sister. The peak of his public influence coincided with his nearly three-decade tenure as the sixth president of Morehouse College, a historically black institution of higher learning, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mays was born in the Jim Crow South on a repurposed cotton plantation to freed sharecroppers. He traveled North to attend Bates College and the University of Chicago from where he began his career in activism as a pastor in Georgia's Shiloh Baptist Church. After a brief career as a professor, he was appointed the founding Dean of the School of Religion at Howard University in 1934 which elevated him to national prominence as a proponent of the New Negro movement. Six years later, Mays was tapped to lead Morehouse out of its financial insecurity. Over his tenure from 1940 to 1967, the college's financial endowment doubled, enrollment quadrupled, and it became academically competitive. By the 1960s, Mays established the college as a feeder school for "African-American firsts" in the United States.

Due to the college's small student body, Mays personally mentored many students, most notably King; the two first met in 1944. King was known as Mays' "spiritual son" and Mays his "intellectual father". After King's "I Have A Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Mays gave the benediction. Five years later, upon King's assassination and death, Mays delivered the eulogy where he described King in his "No Man is Ahead of His Time" speech. Mays stepped down from the Morehouse presidency in 1967 continuing to work as a leader in the African American community through national social tours. He presided over the Atlanta Board of Education from 1969 to 1978, where he initiated the racial desegregation of Atlanta.

Mays' contributions to the civil rights movement have had him credited as the "movement's intellectual conscience" or alternatively the "[[#Death and legacy|Dean [or Schoolmaster] of the Movement]]". Historian Lawrence Carter described Mays as "one of the most significant figures in American history". Memorials include hundreds of streets, buildings, statues, awards, scholarships, grants, and fellowships named in his honor. Numerous efforts have been brought forward to posthumously award Mays the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as feature him on a U.S. postage stamp. Mays has, since 1995, been entombed on the campus of Morehouse, with his wife, Sadie Gray, after an initial burial in Augusta.

Early life

Benjamin Elijah Mays was born on August 1, 1894, in Epworth, South Carolina, in the small county of Greenwood, South Carolina, the youngest of eight children. His mother, Louvenia Carter Mays, and father, Hezekiah Mays, were born into slavery on Virginia and South Carolina plantations, respectively. Both were freed in their later lives with the passage of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Mays' father often hit him, his siblings and Louvenia growing up, expressing anger about how he was treated by his master. The "Mays" family name was derived from their slaver and owner's name, Henry Hazel Mays; he owned 14 slaves in the same area. Hezekiah worked as a cotton sharecropper to generate income for his family.

Mays was told to be cautious of white people and exhibit black pride whenever possible growing up. Mays' older sister, Susie, began to teach him how to read before his formal schooling commenced, which gave him a year's growth in reading compared to the other students in his primary schools. School officials cited him as "destined for greatness". Growing up, he went by the nickname "Bennie" and was inspired by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Thomas E. Miller. The Bible was influential to young Mays because he could see his name (of Biblical origins) mentioned frequently, instilling a feeling of empowerment within. During this time, Benjamin Tillman rose to power in South Carolina which saw to the redoubling of lynching and segregation in Mays' neighborhood. Throughout his tenure as governor, 18 black men were lynched and dozens were hurt in the 1876 shoot-off. On November 8, 1898, members of the Phoenix Riot–a white supremacist mob–rode up on horses to the Mays household, a repurposed cotton plantation. They drew their guns at Mays' father and told him to remove his hat and bow down to them. The event would stay with Mays throughout his life. A year later, white mobs and Ku Klux Klan members searched his house in search of relatives after local newspapers announced that cotton prices had plummeted.

Early education

thumb|Mays traveled to Maine to study at [[Bates College when he was 23.]]In 1911, he was enrolled at the Brick House School in Epworth, a Baptist-sponsored He also was enrolled in Bethany Industrial Graded School in McCormick, South Carolina founded by his church pastor Rev. James Foster Marshall. He then transferred to the High School Department of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. He graduated in 1916, aged 22 as its valedictorian. In high school, teachers often let Mays instruct parts of the mathematics curriculum to students in exchange for extra credit. He won awards for debate and mathematics. A teacher at the school had told Mays to seek graduate school at the University of Chicago as he thought the school would best nurture Mays' intellect. However, before attending graduate school Mays needed to seek an undergraduate education. His relatives and teachers forced him to attend a Baptist university–the Virginia Union University. He grew weary of the violence against blacks in Virginia so he sought the guidance of his academic advisors at Virginia Union. They advised him to look into schools in the North as they were typically seen as more prestigious, challenging, and prominent than those of the South.

Four professors at the university had attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and urged Mays to apply. However, its exacting standards prohibited him from attending. After a year more in Richmond, Mays elevated his grades to the top of his class and wrote personally to Bates president George Colby Chase. Chase granted him a full financial aid package and boarding upon hearing his story and reviewing his academic background. Virginia Union's president warned him that studies at Bates would be "too hard for a colored boy" and that he should stay in Virginia. Mays ignored his warnings and enrolled in 1917, aged 23. While at Bates he felt pressure to compete with "Yankees at the Yankee level" which drove him to dedicate him to his studies. He would write in a diary: "Yankee superiority was the gauntlet thrown down. I had to pick it up." Working to midnight weekly and arising at 4 AM, Mays excelled at Greek, mathematics, and speech. Although he would experience little racism in college, upon seeing The Birth of a Nation in a local cinema, the crowd cheered for the white slaver which frightened Mays. In college, he was captain of the debate team, played on the football team and served as the Class Day Speaker. He graduated with departmental honors with a B.A. in 1920. Contrary to popular writing and official college records, Mays never received Phi Beta Kappa; his attendance of a "high school school from the South" disqualified him.

Marriages

Shortly after graduation, he married his first wife, Ellen Edith Harvin, in August 1920 in Newport News, Virginia. The two met when Mays was still in South Carolina and wrote to each other frequently. She was a home economics teacher at a local college before she died after a brief illness two years after they married at age 28. He met his second wife, Sadie Gray, while working at South Carolina State College. After months of courtship, they married on August 9, 1926. In March 1925, Mays was award an M.A. in religious studies from the university. Upon receiving his master's degree, he wrote to the pastorate with his intention of resigning to pursue a doctorate in the coming years. However, due to his financial status, he took up a teaching position instructing English at South Carolina State College from 1925 to 1926. Mays left his teaching position after routinely clashing with other faculty over grade inflation and academic standards.

In 1926, he moved to Tampa, Florida, to serve as the director of the Tampa Urban League. While there, the Urban League produced what became known as the "Mays Report", which detailed the growth of Tampa's African-American communities and the difficulties they experienced living in segregated neighborhoods. Though he did not stay in the area for long, Mays made enough of an impact on the nascent push for civil rights in the region that he has been honored with a bust on the Tampa Riverwalk Historical Monument Trail. From 1928 to 1930, he lived in Atlanta and served as the national student secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). A couple of months later, he was asked to serve as the director of Study of Black Churches in the United States by the Institute of Social and Religious Research of New York. In 1932, Mays returned to the University of Chicago with the intent of completing a Ph.D. in line with what was asked by the Institute of Social and Religious Research of New York. After some deliberation between fields of studies he could pursue a doctorate in, he eventually decided to study religion and not mathematics or philosophy. Mays 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. He was a vocal opponent of the notion that black men are inherently more violent than their white counterparts in universities. He was a vocal proponent of the New Negro movement and frequently lectured about its foundlings and applications.

In January 1940, Mays was secretly approached by John Hervey Wheeler, a trustee of Morehouse College, to see if he was interested in an upcoming search for the college's next president. Wheeler told Mays that the school had a tough time with getting tuition payments out of the students, growing their endowment, and establishing national prominence. Mays expressed interest in the position but Wheeler cautioned him about the odds of him actually being offered the job. On March 10, 1940, Mays was offered the presidency of Morehouse by its trustees; he moved to Atlanta shortly after. When Mays left Howard University, he was honored with the renaming of the newly constructed home of the divinity school to "Benjamin Mays Hall". Mays set out to improve the training of Morehouse men, increase enrollment, grow its endowment, and collect tuition payments.

Many associated with the college referenced him as a "builder of men".

Effects of World War II

Soon after primary advancements were made with the college, World War II broke out and many students were drafted for military service. The chairman of the Board of Trustees of Morehouse approached Mays and requested the school be shut down for the remainder of the war, which prompted Mays to lash out and reject his proposition publicly. Mays counter-proposal was to open the school to younger students who were ineligible to be drafted. He moved to improve the academic quality of the students by lowering admissions rates, and reforming the academic platform. College faculty were often encouraged to befriend students and provided them with guidance in a tumultuous social scene at the time. Although he was a college president, he was not allowed to vote in the 1950s until he was 52 years old.

Roles in the White House

As president he was in great demand as a public speaker. He met hundreds of national and international leaders and served as a trusted advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. He was appointed by President Truman to the Mid-Century White House Conference on Children and Youth. When Pope John XXIII died in 1963, President Kennedy sent Mays and his vice president to represent the United States at the funeral in Rome, Italy. During the Kennedy administration, southern members of the Senate blocked Mays' appointment to the United States Civil Rights Commission by accusing him of being a Communist. Mays denied the charges. His relationship with President Jimmy Carter was marked with "warmth" and "hospitality". Carter visited Mays' home in Atlanta, and Mays in turn campaigned for Carter during his 1976 and 1980 presidential runs. Carter wrote to Mays on a monthly basis during his presidency asking him about "human rights, international affairs, and discrimination." Over Mays' twenty-seven years leading Morehouse, the enrollment increased 169%, from 238 to almost a thousand students and furthered the motivation for graduates to pursue graduate studies.

"No man is ahead of his time" speech

The two developed a close relationship that continued until King's assassination by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. King and Mays promised each other that whoever outlived the other would deliver the eulogy at the other's funeral.

On April 9, 1968, Mays delivered a eulogy that would later be known as the "No Man is Ahead of His Time" speech. It was later hailed as "a masterpiece of twentieth century oratory". These awards from South Carolina were deeply appreciated by Mays as he left the state in fear of his life and this he loved. During the social transformation of the South in the 1970s, Mays' legacy in his birthplace was solidified and he took on the title of "native son".

Atlanta board presidency

At age seventy-five, Mays was elected president of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education, where he supervised the peaceful desegregation of Atlanta's public schools as a consequence of the 1970 federal court order. Members of the board argued that since the bussing was not a part of their system they did not have to create one for desegregation; however, the idea was shot down by Mays, who cited the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Morehouse College established the Benjamin E. Mays Scholarship shortly after his death. He was known to Dillard University president Samuel DuBois Cook as "[one of the] great architects of the civil rights movement. Not only in training individuals but in writing his books, leadership in churches, as a pastor, college president. He set the standard. And he was uncompromising."

Sites and honors

In his home state of South Carolina a portrait of Mays, painted by artist Larry Francis Lebby, was placed in the gallery of the South Carolina House chambers in 1981. Mays was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 1984. His childhood home was relocated from Epworth to Greenwood, SC and is listed as a State Historic Site by the government of South Carolina, being referred to as an "education icon" by the South Carolina Radio Network in 2011. Upon his death Mays was designated Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Sigma Rho, Delta Theta Chi, Omega Psi Phi. He was elected to the Schomburg Honor Roll of Race Relations along with "only a dozen major leaders to be so honored." In 2011, Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, introduced the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship at Williams College. Due to his stature in academia he was frequently awarded honorary degrees from universities. He was awarded 40 of them during his lifetime and as of February 2018, he has received 56 honorary degrees. The college established the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professorship in 1985. There are numerous memorials to Mays in the United States, including:

Benjamin Mays Center of Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine, U.S.
Benjamin E. Mays International Magnet School, in St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
Mays House Museum, in Greenwood, South Carolina, U.S.
Benjamin Mays Historic Site, in Greenwood, South Carolina, U.S.
Dr Benjamin E. Mays Elementary School in Greenwood, South Carolina, U.S.
Mays United Methodist Church, in Ninety Six, South Carolina, U.S.
Mays Crossroads on Highway 171 in Ninety Six, South Carolina, U.S.
Benjamin E. Mays Elementary Academy, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Benjamin E. Mays High School in Pacolet, South Carolina, U.S.

Medal of Freedom effort

After Mays stepped down from the Atlanta Board of Education presidency in 1981, a petition was sent to the desk of U.S. President Ronald Reagan requesting that Mays be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but it was turned down. Georgian representative John Lewis proposed a bill in January 1993 that would commemorate Mays on a federal stamp and requested that Mays be given the Medal of Freedom posthumously. The request was sent to U.S. President Bill Clinton but his time as president ended before he could address the request. A request was sent once again to U.S. President George W. Bush by Georgian representatives Max Cleland and Zell Miller which passed both houses of Congress but has yet to be signed by a U.S. president. The petition was sent once more in 2012 to U.S. President Barack Obama, yet failed to be awarded.

References

External links

Image: Benjamin E. Mayes Portrait at the South Carolina State House.