GREENWOOD, S.C. (AP) — A museum dedicated to the life of Benjamin E. Mays, an educator who was an early inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr. and was often referred to as the father of the civil rights movement, opened Tuesday.
Civil rights leader Andrew Young, a former Atlanta
mayor and U.N. ambassador, spoke at the dedication of Mays' childhood home in
Greenwood's Epworth community.
"It all started right over here," Young
said, pointing at Mays' small childhood home, according to The Index-Journal of
Greenwood. "It started here in a log cabin and a cotton patch. If it
hadn't been for Benjamin Mays, there probably wouldn't have been a Martin
Luther King. Nor an Andrew Young, nor a (former Atlanta mayor) Maynard Jackson.
In fact, the legacy that came out of this little area is — forgive me, I don't
mean any heresy — but it is like Jesus coming out of the little town of
Bethlehem."
Young's documentary on Mays' friendship with
"Gone with the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell was scheduled to be
shown at the Greenwood Community Theater later Tuesday, and the playing of two
of Mays' inspirational speeches was also planned.
Born in 1894, Mays left the Epworth community to
attend the High School Department at South Carolina State College in
Orangeburg, according to the museum website. After graduating there, he
enrolled at a black college in Virginia and then went on to the integrated
Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
He earned his master's degree from the University
of Chicago while he was teaching at Morehouse College in Atlanta and serving as
a Baptist minister. He was named president of Morehouse College in 1940 and
held that position for 27 years. Among the graduates of Morehouse during Mays'
tenure was Martin Luther King Jr., in 1948. King called Mays his intellectual
father and credited Mays with leading him into the ministry.
Mays retired from Morehouse College in 1967, but he
didn't quit working in education. Two years later, he was elected to the
Atlanta Board of Education and later became that board's first black president.
He served on the board until 1981. Mays died in 1984, just a few months shy of
his 90th birthday.
Located about 75 miles of Columbia, the Benjamin E.
Mays Historic Preservation Site has been in the works for several years and
curator Loy Sartin has spent the past year collecting and cataloguing material
and artifacts.
Mays' childhood home was moved in 2004 from a
pasture along U.S. Highway 178 in Greenwood County to the grounds of GLEAMNS
Human Resources Commission Inc. The organization serves more than 9,000
low-income households in the Upper Savannah Planning District, including
Greenwood, Laurens, Edgefield, Abbeville, McCormick, Newberry and Saluda
counties.
"I just thought it was incredible, when you
would pass by down there on 178 when it was there and you would see that sign
that he was born there and that he became the person he did. For a long time I
knew very little about Dr. Mays, basically just what was on that sign,"
Sartin told The Index-Journal. "But, when you start reading his
autobiography and his writings you see what a tremendous person he was and what
an impact he had on this nation."
The site includes the Mays home, a 19th century
one-room schoolhouse and a museum and interpretive center. The collection
includes photographs, books, clothes and other personal effects.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
