Before the rise of the modern civil rights movement, Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays was a very articulate critic of segregation in America. Mr. Mays had many roles in his lifetime. He was a minister, educator, social activist, and president of Morehouse College, which is a college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Mays was also a mentor to the (great) Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Mays was born in 1895, and he was the youngest of eight children. His parents were tenant farmers and former slaves. After spending at year (studying) at Virginia Union University, he transferred to Bates College, which is located in Maine. He received his B.A. from Bates in 1920. After graduating from Bates in 1920, he attended the University of Chicago for graduate school, and received his M.A. in 1925, and a Ph.D in the School of Religion in 1935.

While in Chicago, he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1922. Later, he taught Morehouse and at South Carolina State College. While working on his doctorate, Mays and Joseph Nicholson published a study entitled The Negro's Church, which was the first sociological study of African-American religion and clerical practices. In 1926, he was appointed executive secretary of the Tampa, Florida Urban League. After two years at this post he became National Student Secretary of the YMCA.

In 1938, he published The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature. His most famous student there was Martin Luther King Jr. The two developed a close relationship that continued until King's death in 1968; as his lifelong mentor, Mays delivered the eulogy for King. Mays emphasized two themes throughout his life: the dignity of all human beings and the gap between American democratic ideals and American social practices. Those became key elements of the message of King and the American civil rights movement.

Mays explored these themes at length in his book “Seeking to Be a Christian in Race Relations,” and this was published in 1957. After his retirement in 1967 from Morehouse, Mays 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).

One of the Atlanta Public High Schools was named in his honor, Benjamin E. Mays High School. It is known for its (student) success in the Academy of Science & Mathematics. Benjamin is a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Dr. Mays died in Atlanta on March 28, 1984, and years later he and his wife Sadie's remains were entombed on the campus of Morehouse College.

Author: Omarr RaSharjd Lee
Email:  omarr.lee@dot.gov