Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman's Delegation to India |
Mordecai Johnson |
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Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman visited India in 1935-1936 and met Gandhi. Thurman would become a mentor for Martin Luther King Jr., preaching "The Christian sees..that fear and dishonesty run the entire frantic gamut of our culture and our daily living. He sees institutions dedicated to high and holy ends, finding themselves as literal instruments of violence and exploitation in the world..He sees his own government..going to support engines of war against which...he is dedicated to struggle"
William Stuart NelsonWilliam Stuart Nelson, was president of Shaw University before moving to Dilliard and finally Howard University as Dean of the School of Religion. He visited India several times, writing an article on the Gandhian Principles of Non Violent Cooperation. He said, comparing Gandhi to Jesus and the Buddha, "Gandhi is nearest to us in time, the problems he faced were extraordinarily akin to ours, and his experiments with non-violence in the presence of these problems were so unique in method and so revolutionary in result that we are constrained to ask what guidance he has for us. Moreover, he fell under the influence of those who went before, and in him their spirit flowered."
James LawsonJames Lawson not only visited India but in fact stayed in India for three years. He said in an interview "I probably first met Gandhi in the pages of black newspapers in our home. I didn’t really read a book by Gandhi until 1947, my first year of college. A lot of black newspapers saw Gandhi as an ally in the struggle against racism and Jim Crow and American apartheid. They thought what he was doing in India and South Africa were of utmost importance for black people to know about."
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Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, visited India in 1949. He came back and preached a sermon on Gandhi in Philadelphia which deeply influenced Martin Luther King Jr. He would say "for the first time in history political power, economic exploitation, and military domination have been challenged by the power of the Spirit. It is the first time that 'Soul force or non-violent coercion' has been projected into the political area as a technique of the under-privileged for achieving social ends."
Benjamin E Mays
Benjamin E Mays, president of Morehouse College, visited India in 1938, and met Gandhi. He said "The fact that Gandhi and his non-violent campaign have given the Indian masses a new conception of courage, no man can honestly deny. To discipline people to face death, to die, to go to jail for the cause without fear and without resorting to violence is an achievement of the first magnitude. And when an oppressed race ceases to be afraid, it is free."
Bayard RustinBayard Rustin is here pictured with the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and former Congress Presidents Sarojini Naidu and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. He would join the civil rights movement as a thinker and political strategist saying "It seems to me always in the process of social change there are three jobs to be done. One is the job of analysis, and I'm sure that you people are deeply involved in that job. There is, secondly, the job of synthesis – seeing the nature of the future society. But in a way which is not so rashly blueprinted that it becomes silly. The third job, is that there would be in motion, in that society, an element to make politically possible what is foreseen. And, I repeat, that the Negro movement is, in fact, revolutionary, in not its objective but its method and its demand."
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Martin Luther King Jr.
The most famous connection to Gandhi is, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.. Here he, Coretta Scott King and Lawrence Reddick are pictured with a wreath on Gandhi's memorial in India. Martin Luther King Jr. visited India in 1959. Pictures of their trip are available here.
My Trip To the Land of Gandhi
"We were looked upon as brothers with the color of our skins as something of an asset. But the strongest bond of fraternity was the common cause of minority and colonial peoples in America, Africa and Asia struggling to throw off racialism and imperialism."
His influence speaks to World Conscience
"The Gandhian influence in some way still speaks to the conscience of the world as nations grapple with international problems. If we fail, on an international scale, to follow the Gandhian principle of non-violence, we may end up by destroying ourselves through the misuse of our own instruments. The choice is no longer between violence and non-violence. It is now either non-violence or non-existence."
Martin Luther King Jr. address on all India Radio
"May I also say that since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."
Martin Luther King Jr. sermon on the Life of Gandhi
"For here was a man who was not a Christian in terms of being a member of the Christian church but who was a Christian. And it is one of the strange ironies of the modern world that the greatest Christian of the twentieth century was not a member of the Christian church. And the second thing is, that this man took the message of Jesus Christ and was able to do even greater works than Jesus did in his lifetime."
My Trip To the Land of Gandhi
"We were looked upon as brothers with the color of our skins as something of an asset. But the strongest bond of fraternity was the common cause of minority and colonial peoples in America, Africa and Asia struggling to throw off racialism and imperialism."
His influence speaks to World Conscience
"The Gandhian influence in some way still speaks to the conscience of the world as nations grapple with international problems. If we fail, on an international scale, to follow the Gandhian principle of non-violence, we may end up by destroying ourselves through the misuse of our own instruments. The choice is no longer between violence and non-violence. It is now either non-violence or non-existence."
Martin Luther King Jr. address on all India Radio
"May I also say that since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."
Martin Luther King Jr. sermon on the Life of Gandhi
"For here was a man who was not a Christian in terms of being a member of the Christian church but who was a Christian. And it is one of the strange ironies of the modern world that the greatest Christian of the twentieth century was not a member of the Christian church. And the second thing is, that this man took the message of Jesus Christ and was able to do even greater works than Jesus did in his lifetime."
