Sunday, we honored Dr. Benjamin Mays who was the "spiritual and intellectual mentor“ to Dr Martin Luther King. Dr Mays was born in South Carolina, to freed sharecropper parents on a repurposed cotton plantation. As a youth, he witnessed racist lynchings, his family was threatened by white mobs and the Ku Klux Clan. He attended Bates College in Maine on full scholarship, did graduate work and earned his PhD at the University of Chicago, and was ordained a Baptist minister. He then traveled to India and met Mahatma Gandhi who helped Mays shape his civil rights ideology and practice.
As a student at Morehouse College, Martin Luther King Jr. developed a friendship with Dr. Mays who was president of the college and often preached in the college chapel. Dr. Mays continued to influence and encourage his Dr. King's nonviolent activism, career prospects and ambitions. Dr. Mays remained one of Dr King’s most trusted advisors over the next 14 years, especially as death threats grew more ominous and the public “battles” more dangerous. He preached the eulogy at Dr King’s funeral in 1968.
Today, we hold all mentors who fight injustice with nonviolence in our prayer. Let us thank God for the brilliance and moral fortitude of Dr Benjamin Mays, learn from his example, and put it into practice in our own lives.
