Howard Thurman

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a doctoral student in theology when Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was appointed the first African American Dean of the Boston University Chapel.  Martin listened intently to his weekly sermons.  Howard, who had attended Morehouse College with “Daddy King,” became Martin’s mentor and spiritual advisor.  They watched Willie Mays and Larry Doby, two former players of the Negro Leagues, face off in the 1954 World Series on Howard’s television in his home.  Howard sent Martin and Coretta King a copy of his 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited with an inscription on the inside cover, “To the Kings–the test of life is often found in the amount of pain one can absorb without spoiling our joy.”  Martin credited Howard’s book as having a major influence on his life in adopting Jesus’ commitment to nonviolence as one of his guiding principles.  Six months after Martin graduated, he led the Montgomery bus boycott, signaling a new era in civil rights reform.  Howard was one of the lesser-known names in the civil rights era yet played an outsized role in shaping a future generation of African American leaders who followed him.  Before Howard’s tenure in Boston, he founded one of the first intentional interracial churches in the country–The Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco.
Howard was once asked in class what the world needs. “Don’t ask what the world needs,” he said. “Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”  Howard prays for us to come alive to God today: