Benjamin Mays

Benjamin Mays
6th President of Morehouse College
In office August 1, 1940 (1940-08-01) – July 1, 1967 (1967-07-01)
Preceded by	Charles D. Hubert As Acting President
Succeeded by	Hugh Gloster
1st Dean of the School of Religion at Howard University
In office January 1, 1934 – January 3, 1941
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	John Moore
Personal details
Born	Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-08-01)August 1, 1894 Ninety Six, South Carolina, U.S.
Died	March 28, 1984(1984-03-28) (aged 89) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Resting place	Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Memorial Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouses	Ellen Harvin ​ (m. 1920⁠–⁠1923)​ Sadie Gray ​ (m. 1926⁠–⁠1969)​
Parent(s)	Louvenia Carter Mays Hezekiah Mays
Alma mater	Virginia Union University Bates College University of Chicago
Known for	Civil rights activism
Nickname(s)	"Bennie"; "Buck Bennie"

Benjamin Elijah Mays (August 1, 1894 – March 28, 1984) was an American Baptist minister and American 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 "Dean [or Schoolmaster] of the Movement".^[1][2] Historian Lawrence Carter described Mays as "one of the most significant figures in American history".^[3][4] 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.