The Magnificent Mays: A Biography of Benjamin Elijah Mays PDF
Preview The Magnificent Mays: A Biography of Benjamin Elijah Mays
The Magnificent Mays Benjamin Elijah Mays. Courtesy of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. A B The Magnificent Mays A Biography of Benjamin Elijah Mays John Herbert Roper, Sr. The University of South Carolina Press © 2012University of South Carolina Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208 www.sc.edu/uscpress 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: Roper, John Herbert. The magnificent Mays : a biography of Benjamin Elijah Mays / John Herbert Roper, Sr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN978-1-61117-077-1(cloth : alk. paper) 1.Mays, Benjamin E. (Benjamin Elijah), 1894–1984. 2.Morehouse College (Atlanta, Ga.)—Presidents—Biography. 3.African American educators—Biography. 4.African Americans—Civil rights. i.Title. LC851.M72R67 2012 378.0092—dc23 [B] 2012003647 ISBN 978-1-61117-184-6(ebook) For John and Kyle This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations viii Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Getting Dr. Payne 1 1 Seed of James, Branch of Prophets and Judges, 1894–1898 5 2 The Ravening Wolf, 1898 15 3 A Rambo Boy after the Riot, 1898–1911 32 4 The Student, 1911–1917 42 5 Wisdom in Northern Light, 1918–1919 60 6 For Every Time There Is a Season, 1920–1924 74 7 My Times Are in Thy Hands, 1924–1926 111 8 New Negroes on Detour, 1926–1934 131 9 The Great Commission and Its Filling, 1934–1936 158 10 In the Nation’s Capital, 1936–1940 176 11 In My Father’s House, 1940–1947 207 12 “To your tents,” 1948–1967 231 13 “Myne owne familiar friend,” 1968 256 14 Leave Me a Double Portion, 1969–1984 284 Notes 309 Bibliography 341 Index 357 Illustrations Benjamin Elijah Mays frontispiece Senator Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman 17 Brick House School 35 Young Benjamin Mays 61 Benjamin and Sadie Gray Mays 129 Mordecai Wyatt Johnson 174 Alain Locke 178 Senator Coleman L. Blease 181 Benjamin Mays and Florence Reed 215 Benjamin Mays and Charles E. Merrill 219 Benjamin Mays and President Jimmy Carter 305 Benjamin Mays with his sister Susie Mays Glenn 307 Preface Word about Words This book is a biography of a good man who made a difference in what is often called the “long civil rights movement.” He never called it by that name him- self, but he certainly understood that the movement started for him when night riders attempted to kill him in 1898, and he certainly considered that it was uncompleted when he faced his final days in 1984. An accomplished mathe- matician and statistician, he could count, and as a thoughtful theologian, he knew what counted. He knew that the movement started before him and would continue after him, and he knew that he was only one in a procession of dedi cated servants of the movement. The title Magnificent Mays is not a celebratory judgment, however much deserved. Instead my title represents the thesis, or at least the organizing theme, of this biography: Benjamin Elijah Mays self-consciously and methodically mea sured himself by a classical standard of conduct and performance that he learned as an undergraduate student of ancient Greek language and culture at Bates College. He then refined it over the decades. The idea is a combination of concepts he drew from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethicsand the Roman Stoi - cism of Marcus Aurelius, but the reader need not be versed in classical ethics to follow this study of his life. I do believe that the best way to understand Mays’s actions, especially the courageous ones, is to understand his version of the Greek megalosukosor the Latin magnanimatatum(both of which may be translated as “high-minded soul”) as he built it and as he employed it over his long years. I have tried to show faithfully the building and the employing without trying to judge how accurately he understood Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius. By his own lights, he successfully followed his model, and I judge that he was useful and good in his dangerous and challenging time because he faithfully used that model—always in his way since he was also “still a Baptist,” as he put it. The title of this book is thus not a judgment or an effort to be artistic. It is my attempt to understand a particular man according to his own ethical stan- dards of personal and professional conduct. Related to that attempt are other decisions about language. As much as possible, I have let Bennie Mays speak in his own voice and have tried to keep my own voice out of his way. Thus I
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