Benjamin E. Mays
Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-1984) was an influential American minister, educator, scholar, and civil rights advocate, best known for his long tenure as president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Born into a challenging environment in South Carolina to parents who had been enslaved, Mays overcame significant obstacles to pursue education, ultimately earning degrees from Bates College and the University of Chicago. His professional journey began at Morehouse College, where he initially taught mathematics before becoming its president, a position he held for 27 years. During this time, he significantly enhanced the college's reputation and played a key role in shaping the lives of many students, including Martin Luther King Jr., who regarded Mays as a mentor. Mays was a committed advocate for civil rights, although he felt his administrative responsibilities limited his direct involvement. He was also a prolific writer, contributing to the fields of church history and African American religious studies. Mays's legacy is marked by his deep commitment to education and his impact on the civil rights movement, illustrating the vital role of mentorship and scholarship in the pursuit of social justice.
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Subject Terms
Benjamin E. Mays
Educator
- Born: August 1, 1894
- Birthplace: Epworth, South Carolina
- Died: March 28, 1984
- Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia
Mays was the president for twenty-seven years of Morehouse College, a historically African American institution. He provided intellectual and moral support to civil rights activists and was a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Early Life
Benjamin Elijah Mays was born on August 1, 1894, in Epworth, South Carolina. He was the youngest of eight children of Hezekiah and Louvenia Carter Mays. Both parents were born into slavery. After the Civil War they made a hardscrabble living as sharecropping tenant farmers in South Carolina’s cotton economy. Benjamin Mays’s childhood was not easy. His father was an alcoholic. One of his earliest memories was of the 1898 Phoenix riot, when African Americans feared for their lives.
Despite the difficult conditions, Mays found in his mother a source of strength. Louvenia had a sustaining religious faith, which she instilled in her children. Mays’s oldest sister, Susie, made sure he learned to read and write, and Mays determined to get an advanced education. At age fifteen, he attended a small Baptist school in McCormick, South Carolina. At seventeen, he left home to attend the South Carolina State College high school at Orangeburg. He graduated as the school valedictorian in 1916. The following year, Mays enrolled in Virginia Union University. During his summers, he worked as a Pullman sleeping car porter.
Up to that point, Mays had been educated in exclusively African American schools. He decided to transfer to Bates College in Maine to receive the same education as northern whites. Mays graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1920. The same year, he married Ellen Harvin; she died in 1923.
Life’s Work
Choosing a career in ministry, Mays enrolled in the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1920. After taking advanced courses in theology and sociology for a year, he was invited by Morehouse College president John Hope to teach mathematics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, at the time one of the best-known African American institutions of higher learning. It was the beginning of Mays’s historic relationship with Morehouse. Mays also was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1921 and became pastor of Atlanta’s Shiloh Baptist Church, a small congregation of about 125 members.
After teaching for three years, Mays returned to the University of Chicago to complete his master’s degree. His master’s thesis was in the field of church history. In 1925, Mays took a job teaching at his alma mater, South Carolina State College, where he married Sadie Gray in 1926. The next year he and Sadie both accepted positions in Tampa, Florida, with the National Urban League, a civil rights organization for African Americans. In 1928, Mays became student secretary of the National Council of the Young Men’s Christian Association, a position he held for four years, until he returned to the University of Chicago to complete his Ph.D. His academic reputation was secured when he cowrote (with Joseph Nicholson) a pioneering study, The Negro’s Church (1933). In 1935, Mays was awarded a Ph.D. and took a position as dean of Howard University’s School of Religion. He published his dissertation as The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature (1938). Proving himself an able administrator at Howard, Mays was offered the position of president of Morehouse College, the sixth in that school’s history.
Morehouse was founded in 1867 as a Baptist college for African American men. Continuing the efforts of his distinguished predecessor, Hope, Mays built Morehouse into a leading educational institution during his twenty-seven-year tenure as president. Mays was an ardent advocate of civil rights but believed that he was precluded from a role as an activist by his duties and responsibilities as Morehouse president. With his support, many of the Morehouse students became active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. One particular Morehouse student he got to know was Martin Luther King, Jr., who later would describe Mays as his “spiritual and intellectual mentor.” When King was imprisoned for civil disobedience in 1963, scandalizing many fellow ministers, Mays was vocal in his support. Known as both an outstanding orator and a friend of King, Mays was selected to deliver the eulogy at King’s funeral on April 9, 1968. (Mays also delivered the eulogy for Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, on March 16, 1971.)
After his retirement as Morehouse president in 1967, Mays served as chairman of the Atlanta Board of Education until 1981. He was awarded fifty-six honorary degrees and published seven books and numerous articles. He also held executive offices in the Federal Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Mays died on March 28, 1984, in Atlanta.
Significance
Mays’s contribution to American society was multifaceted. He was a devout clergymen and a scholar of religion. His books made a contribution to church history, the history of African American religion, and the social gospel. Mays’s twenty-seven-year presidency at Morehouse College increased its prestige. He inspired a generation of Morehouse students, most notably King. A commanding presence, he was the embodiment of rectitude and integrity. Although he believed that his duties as president restrained his ability to participate in civil rights activism, he was a staunch supporter of those on the front lines seeking equality. The tributes paid to him by King and other civil rights leaders indicate that Mays was correct in his belief that his greatest contribution was as an educator.
Bibliography
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Volume one of a Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Civil Rights movement. Includes an account of King at Morehouse College, indicating the impact Mays had on King and the broader campus community.
Carter, Edward, Sr. Walking Integrity: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1998. A collection of nineteen essays by various writers on the life and work of Mays. Contains a bibliography of Mays’s writings.
Colston, Freddie, ed. Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Speaks: Representative Speeches of a Great American Orator. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002. Mays was an accomplished speaker whose eloquence made a profound impression on King. This book includes thirty-one of Mays’s most important speeches, spanning his career.
Cook, Samuel, ed. Benjamin E. Mays: The Life Contribution and Legacy. Franklin, Tenn.: Providence House, 2009. Collection of essays on Mays’s thought and impact by former students, colleagues, and friends.
Dumas, Carrie, and Julie Hunter. Benjamin Elijah Mays: A Pictorial Life and Times. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2006. A life of Mays shown though rare historical photographs.
Mays, Benjamin. Born to Rebel: An Autobiography. 1971. Reprint. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. Mays’s autobiography includes appendixes listing his honorary degrees, several articles he wrote, and his eulogy of King.
Russell, Dick. Black Genius: Inspirational Portraits of African-American Leaders. New York: Skyhorse, 2009. Explores the theological and intellectual influence of Mays on the thought and life of King.