Howard Thurman Papers Project

The man who seeks community within his own spirit, who searches for it in his experiences with the literal facts of the external world who makes that his formal intent as he seeks to bring order out of his collective life, is not going against life but will be sustained and supported by life.

Pastor, poet, critic and educator, Howard Washington Thurman (1899-1981) was named by Life Magazine in 1953 as one of the 12 greatest preachers of the 20th century. Through his many books, articles, sermons and counsel, Thurman reached a wide variety of audiences and continues to do so today.

The younger generation of modern civil rights movement leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, Vernon Jordan and James Farmer, regularly sought Thurman's pastoral guidance and political counsel. In recent years, the late Arthur Ashe, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and a host of others discovered Thurman's work for themselves and commended it to future generations. Jesse Jackson truly spoke for a multitude of admirers when he proclaimed Thurman "a teacher of teachers, a leader of leaders, a preacher of preachers."

Thurman was born in the segregated town of Daytona, Fla. Raised and ordained in the Baptist Church, he was educated at Morehouse College (B.A. 1923) and Rochester Theological Seminary (B.D. 1926). By the time he was a young man, he had integrated into his African American religious heritage elements of various mystical traditions, the philosophy of pragmatism and the Social Gospel to form the basis of a distinctive interfaith, interracial ministry.

While still a student, Thurman began his public career by becoming a young movement leader in the 1920s with the YMCA as well as various churches and college campuses. He went on to serve at Howard University as professor of Christian theology and dean of Rankin Chapel from 1932-44, where his work as an ecclesiological and liturgical innovator was widely acclaimed. During this period, Thurman also led a "Negro Delegation of Friendship" to South Asia in 1935-36. It was the first delegation of African Americans to meet Mohandas Gandhi. His conversations with Gandhi strengthened his Christian commitment and broadened his theological and international vision. Thurman's Gandhian ideals assumed clearest form in his most famous book, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), which deeply influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders.

Thurman left Howard University in 1944 to help establish the first racially integrated, intercultural and interfaith church in the United States, the Church for the Fellowship of All People, located in San Francisco. From 1953-65, he served as professor of spiritual resources and dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, the first black man to occupy the post of dean at a traditionally white university.

He continued his ministry as director of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust in San Francisco from its founding in 1965 until his death in 1981. Thurman's vision of a "friendly world underneath friendly skies" continues through his rich legacy of the written and oral word.

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