The Magnificent Mays

John Herbert Roper

Description

A comprehensive biography of a dedicated civil rights activist and distinguished South Carolinian

Civil rights activist, writer, theologian, preacher, and educator, Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-1984) was one of the most distinguished South Carolinians of the twentieth century. He influenced the lives of generations of students as a dean and professor of religion at Howard University and as longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. In addition to his personal achievements, Mays was also a mentor and teacher to Julian Bond, founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; future Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson; writer, preacher, and theologian Howard Washington Thurman; and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In this comprehensive biography of Mays, John Herbert Roper, Sr., chronicles the harsh realities of Mays's early life and career in the segregated South and crafts an inspirational, compelling portrait of one of the most influential African American intellectuals in modern history.

Born at the turn of the century in rural Edgefield County, South Carolina, Mays was the youngest son of former slaves turned tenant farmers. At just four years of age, he experienced the brutal injustice of the Jim Crow era when he witnessed the bloody 1898 Phoenix Riot, sparked by black citizens' attempts to exercise their voting rights.

In the early 1930s Mays discovered the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi and traveled to India in 1938 to confer with him about his methods of nonviolent protest. An honoree of the South Carolina Hall of Fame and recipient of forty-nine honorary degrees, Mays strived tirelessly against racial prejudices and social injustices throughout his career. In addition to his contributions to education and theology, Mays also worked with the National Urban League to improve housing, employment, and health conditions for African Americans, and he played a major role in the integration of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).

With honest appreciation and fervent admiration for Mays's many accomplishments and lasting legacy, Roper deftly captures the heart and passion of his subject, his lifelong quest for social equality, and his unwavering faith in the potential for good in the American people.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Black Studies
• Civil Rights
• Social Science
• Cultural
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Ralph David Abernathy
• América
• Jessie Daniel Ames
• Horace Ward
• David Garrow
• Martin Witherspoon Gary
• Rayford Logan
• George Schuyler
• Hosea Williams
• Child of God
• Briggs v. Elliott
• C. Vann Woodward
• Garveyism
• A. Philip Randolph
• Lester Maddox
• General officer
• Great Society
• Civil and political rights
• Human rights
• African American
• General
• American
• Asa Philip Randolph
• Eldridge Cleaver
• Ralph Abernathy
• Dixiecrat
• Earl Warren

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 15 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611171846
• Langue: English

Extrait

T HE M AGNIFICENT M AYS
Benjamin Elijah Mays. Courtesy of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
T HE M AGNIFICENT M AYS
A Biography of Benjamin Elijah Mays
John Herbert Roper, Sr.

The University of South Carolina Press
2012 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Roper, John Herbert.
The magnificent Mays : a biography of Benjamin Elijah Mays / John Herbert Roper, Sr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-077-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Mays, Benjamin E. (Benjamin Elijah), 1894-1984. 2. Morehouse College (Atlanta, Ga.)-Presidents-Biography. 3. African American educators-Biography. 4. African Americans-Civil rights. i. Title.
LC851.M72R67 2012
378.0092-dc23
[B]
2012003647
ISBN 978-1-61117-184-6 (ebook)
For John and Kyle
C ONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Getting Dr. Payne
1 Seed of James, Branch of Prophets and Judges, 1894-1898
2 The Ravening Wolf, 1898
3 A Rambo Boy after the Riot, 1898-1911
4 The Student, 1911-1917
5 Wisdom in Northern Light, 1918-1919
6 For Every Time There Is a Season, 1920-1924
7 My Times Are in Thy Hands, 1924-1926
8 New Negroes on Detour, 1926-1934
9 The Great Commission and Its Filling, 1934-1936
10 In the Nation s Capital, 1936-1940
11 In My Father s House, 1940-1947
12 To your tents, 1948-1967
13 Myne owne familiar friend, 1968
14 Leave Me a Double Portion, 1969-1984
Notes
Bibliography
Index
I LLUSTRATIONS
Benjamin Elijah Mays frontispiece
Senator Benjamin Pitchfork Ben Tillman
Brick House School
Young Benjamin Mays
Benjamin and Sadie Gray Mays
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
Alain Locke
Senator Coleman L. Blease
Benjamin Mays and Florence Reed
Benjamin Mays and Charles E. Merrill
Benjamin Mays and President Jimmy Carter
Benjamin Mays with his sister Susie Mays Glenn
P REFACE
Word about Words
This book is a biography of a good man who made a difference in what is often called the long civil rights movement. He never called it by that name himself, but he certainly understood that the movement started for him when night riders attempted to kill him in 1898, and he certainly considered that it was uncompleted when he faced his final days in 1984. An accomplished mathematician and statistician, he could count, and as a thoughtful theologian, he knew what counted. He knew that the movement started before him and would continue after him, and he knew that he was only one in a procession of dedi cated servants of the movement.
The title Magnificent Mays is not a celebratory judgment, however much deserved. Instead my title represents the thesis, or at least the organizing theme, of this biography: Benjamin Elijah Mays self-consciously and methodically mea sured himself by a classical standard of conduct and performance that he learned as an undergraduate student of ancient Greek language and culture at Bates College. He then refined it over the decades. The idea is a combination of concepts he drew from Aristotle s Nicomachean Ethics and the Roman Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, but the reader need not be versed in classical ethics to follow this study of his life. I do believe that the best way to understand Mays s actions, especially the courageous ones, is to understand his version of the Greek megalosukos or the Latin magnanimatatum (both of which may be translated as high-minded soul ) as he built it and as he employed it over his long years. I have tried to show faithfully the building and the employing without trying to judge how accurately he understood Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius. By his own lights, he successfully followed his model, and I judge that he was useful and good in his dangerous and challenging time because he faithfully used that model-always in his way since he was also still a Baptist, as he put it.
The title of this book is thus not a judgment or an effort to be artistic. It is my attempt to understand a particular man according to his own ethical standards of personal and professional conduct. Related to that attempt are other decisions about language. As much as possible, I have let Bennie Mays speak in his own voice and have tried to keep my own voice out of his way. Thus I quote him saying Negro, which most serious students considered the proper term in the period 1894-1968. It was always his preferred term, although he did begin to use black in print after 1970. Also I have quoted his relatively exclusive or exclusionary language about gender, not because I agree with his usage, but because I do not want to distort his voice, view, or record. This point about gender and language is especially important in his last collection of essays, Disturbed about Man , but it is also vital to my considered understanding of the double portion of prophetic power that he intended to leave-not to all people of both genders-but to his metaphorical sons at Howard University, at Morehouse College, and in the student body of the Atlanta public schools.
The one exception to my practices with regard to language concerns his term tribe -generally used in a biblical sense of believing communities of extended families marked not only by color and physical characteristics but often by blood relationships. Although he uses the term tribe often, I have generally avoided it, except where essential to catch his meaning, and then I have put it into quotation marks. It is essential to note the epiphanic moment when he decided to discontinue use of the term or the thinking involving the term because he realized that all men (if not women) were equal in standing before the Real Lord.
By and large Bennie Mays did the right things, thought the highest thoughts, took the bravest and best actions-at least in my view. The reader will not have to agree with my judgment, however, to get something out of this study. I am not interested in defending or prosecuting every action he took-especially not from the viewpoint of a white humanist in another era. Instead I have focused on showing clearly what was going on around him and his second wife, Sadie Gray Mays-between their marriage in 1926 and her death in 1969-and to what extent the couple (or sometimes he acting alone) transformed given people in particular places at specific times, especially Howard University from 1936 to 1940, Morehouse from 1941 to 1967, and Atlanta s black schoolchildren from 1969 to 1981. I have tried to capture what he intended to do when and where he lived, moved, and had his being, as he liked to quote from Epimanides and as I recite in my high-church Episcopal lectionary.
With apologies to Shakespeare s orator, I have not so much endeavored to praise Mays as to unbury him-unbury him from the considerable shadow of his student Martin Luther King, Jr., and from the shadows of his legions of students and colleagues and allies. To be sure he was mentor to the prophetic King, and he was schoolmaster to the long civil rights movement. Yet he needs to be understood as more than these things. He needs to be recognized for contributions he made beyond, above, and outside those two roles, important and interesting as they are. I consider that he was a prophet in classic Hebrew sense (discerning in his opinion the right path to justice and peace revealed to him by God and then showing that path to others). I judge that he did indeed leave a double portion of such prophetic power to the men he taught-not only at Howard and at Morehouse and not only those involved in the Atlanta public schools in a later season. For reason of that belief, I dedicate this biography to my own biological sons but also to spiritual children of Bennie Mays s movement-in which I include myself.
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
As in all projects that take more than ten years, there is no way to acknowledge adequately the many people who have helped me along this path. Some who have helped me, however, must go in this space.
For teaching me about race relations and other things southern: Joel Williamson; George Tindall; Joseph A. Herzenberg, Jr.; Frank Ryan; Edward Beards ley; Tom Terrill; Robert Weir; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall; C. Vann Woodward; Paul Green; Glenn W. Rainey; Ronald McInnis; and the martyred Reverend William McNeill.
For teaching me about things theological and about the lives of ministers: the Reverend James W. Dawsey, the Reverend Craig Wylie, Bishop Neff Powell, Bishop Heath Light, Bishop Peter Lee, the Reverend Hopkins Weston, the Reverend Tom Carson, the Reverend James Rogers, the Reverend John Miller, the Reverend Alex Barron, and the Reverend Tommy Tipton.
For persuading me to take on this project and for encouraging me along the long way: Malcolm Call and Nancy Grayson.
For resuming the project, rethinking and redirecting it, and riding it through to its end: Alexander Moore and Karen Rood. For preparing the index: Kyle Roper.
For help from their research work in related fields: Orville Vernon Burton, John T. Morgan, Charles W. Joyner, Dennis Dickerson, Charles W. Eagles, Ralph Luker, and the two anonymous referees who reviewed the manuscript for the University of South Carolina Press.
For opening up the trea sure trove of Mays s papers and those of other leaders: the wonderful staff of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of the Founders Library of Howard University, especially Dr. Joellen El-Bashir, archivis