Benjamin Mays biographer Randal Maurice Jelks.

Benjamin E. Mays was a civil rights theorist, educator, preacher, Morehouse College president and mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mays was also one of Bates College’s most influential graduates, a member of the class of 1920. The college presents award-winning Mays biographer Randal Maurice Jelks, a member of the University of Kansas faculty, in a talk at 7 p.m. Monday, March 25, in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

Sponsored by the college’s Office of Intercultural Education, the lecture is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-8376.

Jelks is the author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), the first full-length biography of the man King called his “spiritual and intellectual father.”

In recognition of Schoolmaster of the Movement, Jelks recently received the 2013 Literary Award for Nonfiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, one of several awards with which the organization salutes excellence in works by African-American authors.

Mays was born in 1894 to sharecroppers in rural South Carolina. His first memory was of a white mob threatening his father. From an early age, Mays was determined both to get the best education and to break the grip of Jim Crow laws on the South.

In 1917, he entered Bates as a 23-year-old sophomore after a year at Virginia Union University, where two Bates alumni on the faculty encouraged him to try their alma mater. He came to Lewiston not only for a better education than a person of color could reasonably expect down South, but to prove his intellectual equality to whites.

Proof abounded. Mays won a speaking award in his first year at Bates, finished his senior year as captain of a triumphant debate team and was one of 15 in his class to graduate with honors, among other achievements.

Central to Schoolmaster of the Movement is Jelks’ argument that by connecting the substance of Christianity with the responsibility to challenge injustice, Mays prepared the black church for its central role in the civil rights movement.

And it was at Bates, Jelks writes, that Mays laid the groundwork for “a new biblical interpretation that could mobilize black communities to take action against Jim Crow’s enforced apathy.” Mays’ studies in religion steered him toward an intellectual structure for both his Baptist faith and his personal mission “to uplift his people,” in Jelks’ words.

Mays and Bates had a profound and enduring effect on each other. As Mays famously summed up his experience in Born to Rebel: “Bates College did not ‘emancipate’ me: it did the far greater service of making it possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man.”

Those words are echoed in the college’s mission statement, which begins: “Since 1855, Bates College has been dedicated to the emancipating potential of the liberal arts.” Mays exemplifies commitments to social justice, individual worth and access to education that have always been bedrock values for Bates.

Jelks is an associate professor of American studies at the University of Kansas, with a joint appointment in African and African American studies. He is co-editor of the journal American Studies and a co-founder and editor of the Michigan-based blog theblackbottom.com, which covers politics, culture and social activism.

He received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Michigan, a master’s of divinity from McCormick Theological Seminary and a doctorate in comparative black histories from Michigan State University. He is an ordained clergyman in the Presbyterian Church.

Jelks also wrote the award-winning African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Grand Rapids (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

The Benjamin Bates Society

E. Robert Kinney ’39, LL.D. ’85, has been awarded Bates’ highest alumni honor, the Benjamin Elijah Mays Medal, for distinguished service to the College and to the larger community worldwide. Kinney, a former CEO of General Mills, received the honor from the Alumni Council Nov. 8 in Minneapolis, at the third gathering of the Benjamin Bates Society, philanthropists who have given $1 million or more in lifetime gifts to the College.

The Benjamin Bates Society recognizes the extraordinary philanthropy and personal commitment of Bates donors who have made the College a primary priority, and includes donors with $1 million or more in lifetime gifts to the College. Membership is the highest distinction conferred upon benefactors of the College and is given in the spirit of Bates’ first benefactor, Benjamin Bates, whose gifts were instrumental in the earliest days of the College.

To learn more about the Benjamin Bates Society, please contact Kelly Kerner, Vice President for College Advancement at 207-786-6247 or kkerner@bates.edu. [More...]

View slide show: 'We Can Relate'

Lisa D’Oyen ’09 of Kingston, Jamaica, holds her cell phone in one hand and two open boxes of Hostess crème-filled chocolate Zingers in the other. Standing beside a table lined with edible snacks, lubricated latex condoms, and fact cards, D’Oyen and her psychology classmates share information about HIV/AIDS with students heading to lunch. Their sound system broadcasts hip-hop as a Yale Divinity School recruiter also vies for student attention.

A standard Chase Hall tableau? Not today. This afternoon, D’Oyen stakes her ground in Manley College Center at Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, where she and Mbali Ndlovu ’09 of New York City are spending their fall semester.

Like any of the College’s myriad off-campus study offerings, the exchange program with Spelman and Morehouse hopes to offer students the right experience at the right time: during their junior year, when students are equipped to dig deeper into their intellectual, social, and emotional beings.

For D’Oyen and Ndlovu, part of this exploration will involve race, for at Spelman and Morehouse, the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges, “the courses and the context provide a sensitivity and awareness of racial issues that,” says Steve Sawyer, associate dean of students and director of off-campus study, “is impossible to replicate on a small New England campus — no matter how well-intentioned.”

As part of her pschology course, Lisa D'Oyen works at an HIV/AIDS awareness table in the college center at Spelman College, the historically black women's college in Atlanta.

Another overlay is gender. Spelman wants visiting students like D’Oyen and Ndlovu to leave the school with a “stronger sense of self, their place in the world, and what the Spelman ‘sisterhood’ is all about,” says Desiree Pedescleaux, who oversees the institution’s domestic exchange programs.

Ndlovu and D’Oyen get a sense of the sisterhood from “The Black Female Body in American Culture,” taught by M. Bahati Kuumba, associate professor of women’s studies. The professor discusses how the human body is a system of symbols and how, for black women in U.S. society, those symbols can suggest a political struggle.

After class, Ndlovu schedules an appointment with Kuumba, wanting the professor’s advice on designing a senior thesis topic for her Bates majors in African American and women and gender studies.

Everything about the professor resonates with the two young women. “She’s an activist. She’s been out there. And she’s very political,” D’Oyen says. True, there are political activists on the Bates faculty, she says, but at Spelman “we get the black perspective from black women. We can relate.”

“Like for the first time in my college career,” Ndlovu adds.

Mbali Ndlovu ’09 (left) and Lisa D’Oyen ’09, who studied at Spelman College during the fall, join Claudeny Obas ’09, who spent spring 2006 at Morehouse College, at the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial at Morehouse. Mays graduated from Bates in 1920.

One morning in late November, D’Oyen and Ndlovu head across the street to Morehouse to see the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial. At once, the Bates-Morehouse connection seems real, though they’d heard about it all fall. “Every Morehouse student we met automatically knew what Bates was,” Ndlovu says.

At the monument, the women are joined by Claudeny Obas ’09 of New York City, who’s in Atlanta visiting friends he made while studying at Morehouse in 2006.

Obas, a veteran of mostly white educational environments, talks about what might be gained from a semester at Morehouse, particularly by someone who’s never been in a minority situation — racial, sexual, religious, or other: “an understanding of what it’s like not having as many people to lean on in terms of your peers, and [having to go] outside of your comfort zone just to make the effort to reach people.”

For Obas, the semester started with getting “stuck in a room for two hours learning the school song,” he recalls, but the indoctrination into the Morehouse mystique paid off. “I felt I was joining a long line of prestige,” he says. Obas’ semester at Morehouse deepened his understanding that he “works better” in the multifaceted social milieu of an urban college. “I’ve always known that, but it was made much more apparent to me at Morehouse.”

He experienced one particularly glittering facet of Morehouse life thanks to Roland Davis ’92, assistant dean of students at Bates.

Davis, whose father chairs the Morehouse board of trustees, said that if Obas was accepted for the Morehouse semester, Davis would get him tickets to the school’s “Candle in the Dark” gala.

And that February, Obas was indeed in black tie at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta to see famed photographer Gordon Parks and Tony Award–winner Geoffrey Holder receive their Candle awards for excellence in their fields. Obas also witnessed several Morehouse alums receive their “Bennie” awards for service, achievement, and trailblazing.

“It was quite the experience,” Obas says.

Photographs and text by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Bates, Morehouse, Spelman

The connection between Bates and the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges — Morehouse for men and Spelman for women — dates to 1940, the year Benjamin E. Mays ’20 began his 27-year Morehouse presidency.

The Bates-Morehouse-Spelman Exchange Program was established in 1994, the centennial year of Mays’ birth. While the program has had modest student participation from both sides over the years, Bates is now focusing greater attention on this and similar initiatives, part of redoubled efforts to incorporate a wider spectrum of people, perspectives, and disciplines within the Bates experience.

A pioneer in the field of African American women’s history and chair of the Department of African American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, Professor Sharon Harley is the keynote speaker for the 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates College. Classes at the college are canceled and special programming is scheduled throughout the day with an emphasis on the theme “The Noble Road to Peace: Storming the Battlements of Injustice.”

Scheduled for 10:45 a.m. Monday, Jan. 16, in the Bates College Chapel, Harley’s address is part of a celebration of King’s life and work that includes performances, workshops and a debate between Bates and Morehouse college students. All events are open to the public free of charge. For more information, call 207-786-6400, or see a complete list of scheduled events for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“The noble road to peace is not just a matter of not having war,” says John McClendon, associate professor of African American and American cultural studies at Bates. “More importantly, peace must be joined to justice.” Chaired by McClendon, the Bates committee that organizes the annual observance of King’s birthday chose to recognize King’s ardent opposition to the Vietnam War as it damaged lives abroad and diverted resources from social ills in the United States. “At this time in history we see a very similar situation, especially after Katrina, where 30 percent of the National Guard equipment that could save lives in New Orleans was used to take lives in Iraq,” McClendon says.

The college also co-sponsors an annual MLK Day Read-In where faculty, staff, students and members of the community will share a picture book with Martel School students in grades 4-6 at 1 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19, and Friday, Jan. 20. Those interested in volunteering should e-mail Katie Seamon at this kseamon@bates.edu or call 207-786-8351.

The King Day observance begins on the eve of the holiday, at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15, with a memorial service of worship in the College Chapel, College Street. The Rev. William R. Jones, Florida State University Professor Emeritus, a pathfinder in the field of African American philosophy, delivers the sermon, ” Martin Luther King’s Noble Path to Peace: Pioneers, Pedestals, and Perils,” followed with musical performances by Bates students.  The Multicultural Center hosts an 8:30 p.m. reception with Jones after the service at 75 Franklin St.

The author of Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology, the landmark critique of the black church’s treatment of evil and the nature of suffering, Jones is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of liberation theology, African-American religion, religious humanism and multicultural education. Best known for his contributions to the theory of oppression and conflict resolution, Jones has written more than 100 articles about oppression, justice, black theology, counter-violence and the role of the church in social change.

Student debaters from Bates and Morehouse colleges kick off King Day itself when they argue the topic, “On the Immediate Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq: Noble Road to Peace or Accommodation to Terrorism?” The debaters will be introduced at 9 a.m. in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

The debate will begin at 9:30 a.m. The match has historic resonance for the schools, which share a continuing commitment to collaborative projects. The nation’s largest liberal arts college for men, Morehouse was Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater. One of its longtime presidents was a 1920 Bates graduate and accomplished debater Benjamin Mays, a lifelong adviser to the great civil rights leader. Mays  and the eulogized King in 1968.

Professor Sharon Harley delivers her 10:45 a.m. keynote address, “Race Women, Race Man: Imagined and Real Conversations Between Louise Thompson Patterson, Gloria Richardson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” in the Bates College Chapel.

“Known throughout the world for his steadfast convictions and pursuit of racial equality, King’s nearly decade-long fight in the modern civil rights movement defined his legacy as a political activist and nonviolent protester,” says Harley.

“However, prior to and overlapping with King’s awe-inspiring marches, powerful speeches and seemingly endless patience in the fight for civil rights,” she says, “two women — Louise Thompson Patterson and Gloria Richardson — waged their own politically activist battles for not only racial but gender equality.”

Harley’s talk focuses on the work and lives of these two “race women” during the middle decades of the 20th century, and the imagined and very real conversations they (likely) had with King. “In an attempt to paint a more comprehensive mosaic of black men and women’s long and ongoing struggle for economic and racial justice in the United States,” says Harley, she will examine their activism relative to King’s.

An associate professor of African American Studies, Harley teaches courses on African American history, black culture, women’s history and women and work. She is the recipient of many scholarships and fellowships, including the 2003 Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship, the Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Rockefeller Fellowship for Minority Group Scholars, the American Association of University Women and the Ford Foundation. Her research has focused on the history of black wage-earning women and black women’s organizational activities in the District of Columbia. Harley received her doctorate in U.S. history from Howard University.

A prolific scholar and widely published essayist, Harley is editor of and an essayist for Sister Circle: Black Women and Work (Rutgers University Press, 2002), an interdisciplinary volume exploring the role of work in black women’s lives. Her essay titled “The Death Foretold: Gloria Richardson and the Radical Black Activist Tradition” appears in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (New York University Press, 2001), edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin. Harley’s major publication, Timetables of African American History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in African American History (Simon & Schuster, 1995), was adopted as a selection for the History Book and Book-of-the-Month clubs.

Concurrent Monday afternoon workshops hosted by various academic departments and student organizations begin at 1:15, 2:35 and 3:35 p.m. in classrooms throughout Pettengill Hall. The workshops, featuring speakers and discussion, will focus on RE-STATE THEME. Topics range from King’s spiritual roots to the relationship between African American music and utopia, from the poetry of justice from around the world to recent shifts in Lewiston’s refugee population, from diversity in the sciences to the influence of Hegel on King’s political thought and practice. For more information about the workshops, call 207-786-6400.

The entire King Day observance concludes with a performance and Hurricane Katrina fund-raiser at 7:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall featuring the New Orleans-based tenor Chauncey Packer, a rising young opera star who is a Ph.D. candidate at Louisiana State University. Packer offers a concert of African American sacred music.

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“Intellectual inquiry and a commitment to individual worth and equality of access are at the core of education and of a just community,” said Bates College President Donald W. Harward in announcing the gift. “The establishment at Bates of the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Visiting Professorship confirms these basic cultural and academic values – values made manifest in the work and legacy of Dr. Mays. Nothing could be more profoundly central to the college. We are deeply grateful to Jim Orr and his family for making possible this significant addition to the college.”

The Mays Distinguished Visiting Professorship will not be limited to one field but will support varying terms of appointment in different fields of inquiry for visiting faculty of national and international recognition.

“We are pleased to support the establishment of an ongoing commitment to the very best of what Bates and a liberal education provides,” Orr said, “and to do so in a way that recognizes Dr. Mays — one of the most important leaders in society and in higher education.”

Orr is president and chief executive officer of United Asset Management Corp. of Boston. He currently chairs the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the lives of the world’s poor through science, technology, research and analysis. He is former chairman and CEO of UnumProvident Corp. of Portland, Maine, and Chattanooga, Tenn. In his role as Bates College trustee, Orr has co-chaired the current Bates Presidential Search Committee.

Orr and his wife, Ann Langreth Orr, live in Falmouth, Maine, and Boston. Their daughter, Brooke, is a 1994 graduate of Bates; their second daughter, Sage, is a 2001 graduate of Bowdoin.

President Harward said that Mays’ reflection on his Bates experience in his autobiography could serve as a refrain for a liberal education. “Bates didn’t emancipate me; I emancipated myself,” Mays said. “Bates provided the much greater service of providing the context which supported my choice to be free.”