When discussing the Civil Rights Movement, you often hear about the many brave men and women who risked their lives to address segregation, inequality, and racism in our country. Names like Rosa Parks or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quickly come to mind. However, sometimes the lesser-known people are the influencers for those who stand in the spotlight. Howard Thurman was this type of man.
If you are not familiar with Thurman, you are not alone. He was a minister, philosopher, and civil rights activist. According to Boston University writer Rich Barlow, some people criticized Thurman, calling him “a backbencher in the Civil Rights Movement, more preoccupied with mystical meanderings than frontline protesting.”
While Thurman wasn’t the one marching in the streets or mobilizing people, he certainly inspired those who did. He advocated for human rights on a national level. We know that Thurman challenged people to consider their faith in relation to prevalent social issues. Along the way, he became a spiritual adviser to people like King, Rev. Jesse Jackson, A.J. Muste, and many others at the forefront. Luther E. Smith Jr., the author of Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet, called Thurman a spiritual genius who transformed persons who transformed history.
In his most famous work, Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman sought to consider what Christianity should look like when dealing with poor, disenfranchised people living with their backs against the wall. In this book and in his life, he compared the Jesus of the Bible with the Christianity practiced in America. Surprisingly (or maybe not) in his eyes, those two things did not always agree.
Who Was Howard Thurman?
Howard Thurman was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, on November 18, 1899. The world he lived in was quite different. People accepted discrimination, and lynching was commonplace in the world he was born into. His father died when he was seven, and his grandmother, a former slave, helped raise him. She was one of the first true spiritual influences in his life. He admired her for how she lived out her relationship with Jesus, a faith clearly more actions than words.
As a teenager, he had to leave his hometown to go to a boarding school in Jacksonville because no high school in Daytona Beach allowed black students to attend.
After high school, Thurman earned degrees from Morehouse College and Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Upon completion, he began his career as an educator at the university level, teaching in Atlanta at Morehouse College and Spelman College. Eventually, he ended up in Washington, DC, teaching at Howard University, where he became the first dean of the Andrew Rankin Chapel.
From a philosophical standpoint, Thurman looked to seek societal change through nonviolent direct action. This was one of his greatest contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. A 1935 meeting with Mahatma Gandhi inspired his view on nonviolence. Thurman was the first African-American pastor to meet Gandhi. Compelled by Gandhi’s nonviolent protests in India’s fight for independence, Thurman believed this same approach would work in America. His advocacy for nonviolence influenced others, such as James Farmer, who co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Pauli Murray, a women’s rights advocate who co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW).
Throughout his life, Thurman sought to break down walls of division in our society across ethnic, social, political, and religious lines. More importantly, he challenged people of faith not to neglect what it means to live out their faith in society. One way he lived out his faith began in 1944 when he left Howard University and co-founded a church in San Franciso with Alfred Fisk. The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples became the first interracial and interdenominational church in the United States. Thurman led the church for nine years.
In 1953, Thurman transitioned from the church to become the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. Thurman crossed paths with a young doctoral student named Martin Luther King, Jr. during this time at Boston University. However, they were not strangers. Thurman had been friends with Martin Luther King, Sr. ever since they were classmates at Morehouse College.
10 Quotes by Howard Thurman
1. “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back against the wall. It is urgent that my meaning be crystal clear. The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion say to them? The issue is not what it counsels them to do for others, whose need may be greater, but what religion offers to meet their own needs. The search for an answer to this question is perhaps the most important religious quest of modern life.” – Jesus and The Disinherited
2. “Every period of prayer should provide for a period for an experience of self-examination in the presence of God.” – Meditations of the Heart
3. “Often, the will of God becomes apparent in the central concern of our spirits, which leads us to act or function in accordance with its urgency. Or it may become clear to us only after we have exhausted all our plans and schemes for doing certain things or achieving certain results with our lives.” – Meditations of the Heart
4. “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – 1974 conversation with Gil Bailie, recorded in Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads
5. “We must see clearly that, even though all these things may be said about hatred, there is a most important similarity between hat and love. Both are positive; but hate is positive and destructive, while love is positive and creative.” – The Growing Edge
6. “I learned more, for instance, about the genius of the religion of Jesus from my grandmother than from all the men who taught me all… the Greek and all the rest of it. Because she moved inside the experience [of the religion Jesus] and lived out of that kind of center.” – Essential Writings
7. “A man is always threatened in his very ground by a sense of isolation, by feeling himself cutoff from his fellows. Yet he can never separate himself from his fellows, for mutual interdependence is characteristic of all of life.” – The Search For Common Ground
8. “I have always wanted to be me without making it difficult for you to be you.” – The Search For Common Ground
9. “During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.” – Jesus and The Disinherited
10. “It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed—this, despite the gospel.” – Jesus and the Disinherited
What Can We Learn from Howard Thurman Today?
We can learn many lessons from Thurman, but I will narrow it down to just three. I have included Bible verses that explore these values that Thurman lived out.
1. Dignity. As believers, respecting the dignity of all human life, regardless of that person’s social status, is important.
“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:2-4)
2. Respect. We show respect to those who may believe differently than we do. This does not mean you don’t share your faith with others, but you do it in a way that seeks to convert and not condemn.
“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15)
3. Authenticity. We will affect the world most when we don’t just talk out our faith but when we live out our faith. This means we must engage those who don’t know Jesus and be willing to listen, learn, and love.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
10 Books by Howard Thurman
4. The Search For Common Ground
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Wirestock
This article is part of our People of Christianity catalog that features the stories, meaning, and significance of well-known people from the Bible and history. Here are some of the most popular articles for knowing important figures in Christianity:
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