"Benjamin Elijah Mays" (August 1,1894-March 28,1984)

Was an American minister,educator,scholar,social  activists,and the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta,Georgia from 1940 to 1967.Benjamin was also significant mentor to Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.and was among the most articulate and outspoken critics of segregation before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.Benjamin was born in Ninety Six,South Carolina,the youngest of eight children;his parents were tenant farmers and former slaves.As a child,seeing his father threatened by a white mob on horseback in the aftermath of the Phoenix Election Riot made a deep impression.After spending a year at Virginia Union University,he moved north to attend Bates College in Maine,where he obtained his B.A. in 1920,then entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student,earing an M.A.in 1925 and a P.h.D. in the School of Religion in 1935.His education at Chicago was interrupted several times:he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1922 and accepted a pastorate at the Shiloh Baptist Church of Atlanta,then later taught at Morehouse and at Southern Carolina College.While in graduate school Benjamin worked as a Pullman Porter.He also worked as a student assistant to Dr.Lacey Kirk Williams,pastor of Olviet Baptist Church in Chicago and President of the National Baptist Convention,USA,Inc.While working on his doctorate,he and Joseph Nicholson published a study titled The Negro's Church,the first sociological study of the black church in the United States.Four years later in 1938,he published The Negro God as Reflected in His Literature.In 1926,he was appointed executive secretary of the Tampa ,Florida Urban League.After two years at this post he became National Secretary of the YMCA.Benjamin accepted the position of dean of the School of Religion at Howard University in Washington,D.C.in 1934.During his years as dean,Benjamin traveled to India,where,at the urging of  Howard Thurman, a fellow professor at Howard,he spoke at some length with Mahatma Gandhi.In 1940,Benjamin became president of Morehouse College.His most famous student was Martin Luther King Jr.the two developed a close relationship that continued until Martin's death in 1968;As a his lifelong mentor,Benjamin delivered a the eulogy for Martin.Benjamin gave the benediction at the close of the official program of the March on Washington for jobs and Freedom in 1963.After his retirement in 1967 from morehouse,Benjamin was elected president of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education,where he supervised the peaceful desegregation of Atlanta's public schools.He published two autobiographies,Born to Rebel,(1971),and Lord,the People Have Driven Me On (1981).In 1982,he was awarded the Springarn Medal from the NAACP.