Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894–1984) became the sixth president of Morehouse College, the premier black college of the South, in 1940, and took the college and its students to a new level of choices, attitudes, expectations, hopes, and achievements. Mays was their hero, role model, mentor, friend, and fearless schoolmaster. Lerone Bennett Jr., one of “Bennie’s boys” and a member of the Morehouse class of 1949, asserted of Mays, “Although he taught no classes at Morehouse, he taught, in a manner of speaking, all classes. For his spirit permeated the whole campus and the whole country, and he reached heights attained by few educators.” Many remember the eulogy at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. written and given by Mays, for Dr. King had been one of “Bennie’s boys,” too, from the class of 1948.
Though long in the making, this book was
conceived as a festschrift about the time of Mays’ retirement from the presidency of Morehouse, some forty years ago. Samuel DuBois Cook, student and close friend of Mays, requested that certain
individuals familiar with the life and work of Mays write on specific basic themes Dr. Mays had addressed and deeply wrestled with. Contributors were to consider is broad conceptual framework and vision, theology, and examination of racism, social thought, ethical theory, and philosophy of education. All of the essays in this book were written by Mays’ former students, colleagues, and friends, with one essay being written by Mays himself, and now they are finally presented as if frozen
in time.
