Benjamin Mays Research Paper

When people hear the words, “longtime president of morehouse college of Atlanta” or “Martin Luther King Jr’s mentor, people think, Benjamin Mays. Mays was a distinguished African American educator, scholar, and social activist. Also was a significant mentor to civil rights leader to Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr was his most famous student. Mays also filled leadership roles in several significant national and international organizations, among the National Association for the advancement of colored people (NAACP), the International Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the World Council of Churches, the United Negro College Fund, the National Baptist Convention, the Urban League, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and the Peace Corps Advisory Committee. Benjamin Elijah Mays was born on August 1, 1894 or 1895 in a rural area outside Ninety-Six, South Carolina. He was the youngest of eight children born to Louvenia Carter and Hezekiah Mays, tenant farmers and former slaves. A consistent theme in Mays's boyhood and early adulthood was his quest for education against overwhelming odds. He refused to be
Mays's education at Chicago was interrupted several times, first by stints as a teacher at Morehouse and at South Carolina State College. During his tenure at the latter, he met his future wife, Sadie Gray. Less than a year before completing his dissertation at Chicago in the spring of 1935, Mays accepted a position as dean of the School of Religion at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Mays distinguished himself as an effective administrator, elevating the Howard program to legitimacy and distinction among schools of