Howard Thurman

If you see a list of prominent participants in the Civil Rights Movement, Howard Thurman’s name probably won’t be on it, and Thurman isn’t widely remembered today. But his writings on nonviolence, most notably his 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited, had a profound impact on the thought of Martin Luther King Jr. and provided much of the theological underpinnings of the movement. The Civil Rights Movement we know and remember today simply would not have been the same without the thought and writings of Howard Thurman.

A native of Daytona, Florida, Thurman attended Morehouse College, where in 1923 he graduated first in his class. He then attended Rochester Theological Seminary, again graduating first in his class. He went on to serve as a professor and the Dean of Chapel at Howard University and later at Boston University, publishing 20 books during his academic career.

In 1936 Thurman led a Student Christian Movement delegation to India and while there he had a three-hour meeting with Mahatma Gandhi that would profoundly influence his future work, especially his book Jesus and the Disinherited, which King studied while planning strategy for his civil rights activism.

Theologian, educator, and public intellectual Howard Washington Thurman died at age 81, on April 10, 1981.