Birthday of Howard Thurman (1900-1981)
November 18

American clergyman, teacher, counselor, writer, mystic, grandson of a freed slave. Thurman wrote, "The moving finger of God in human history points ever in the same direction. There must be community."

In 1935 Dr. Thurman traveled to India, where he met Gandhi and became a voice for nonviolence in race relations in the United States. With Professor Alfred G. Fisk, Thurman co-founded in 1944 the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California, pioneering in interracial and interfaith worship. He advised people, "Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you."

Appointed Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University in 1953, Thurman continued his ministry of living in a spirit of love. He established the Howard Thurman Educational Trust to provide assistance to aspiring students. The Trust is now based at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where Thurman served as Professor of Religion, along with his posts at Atlanta’s Spelman College and at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Thurman's books include The Growing Edge, Meditations of the Heart, Disciplines of the Spirit, and Jesus and the Disinherited.

Explore the Howard Thurman Papers Project at the Morehouse College website.

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