Howard Thurman: The Making of a Morehouse Man, 1919-1923 (Howard Washington Thurman ) (Biography‪)‬

Since their founding in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have represented the intellectual incubators, nurturing social-cultural environments, and professional launching pads of numerous black leaders, such as noted black theologian and revered Morehouse man, Howard Washington Thurman (1900-1981). During the post-Reconstruction era and throughout the 1920s, lynching and race riots shaped the landscape of American race relations. HBCUs represented the educational settings where contested notions of what it meant to be an "educated" Black man and how black manhood should, could or would manifest itself in American life. This study examines how the ethos of Morehouse College and its Black male leadership shaped the life of Howard Thurman, class of 1923. (1) In addition to the freedman's aid societies and White missionary and industrial philanthropic organizations, Blacks contributed mightily in multiple ways to their own educational endeavors (Gasman & Sedgwick, 2004). College-educated Blacks of the late 1900s, such as Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, W. E. B. Du Bois, and John Hope came to symbolize the Black talented tenth, whose elite status provided access to elements of the White world closed to other Blacks, yet obligated them to lift up members of their less fortunate communities. Within that context of limited educational opportunity and Black self-agency, Black colleges offered special sanctuaries of learning and development to prepare other leaders for the Black community.