Howard Thurman

African-American author, philosopher, theologian, and civil rights leader, one of the most influential Black contemplatives of the twentieth century and a foundational figure in the spiritual lineage of the American civil rights movement. Born in 1899 in Daytona, Florida, the grandson of an enslaved woman, he became the first Black dean of chapel at a major American university (Boston University) and in 1944 co-founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco — one of the first intentionally interracial, intentionally interfaith congregations in the United States. His 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited articulated a contemplative Christianity from the perspective of the oppressed; Martin Luther King Jr. is said to have carried it with him on the bus boycotts. He died in 1981 in San Francisco, leaving a body of work — Meditations of the Heart, The Inward Journey, With Head and Heart — that remains a touchstone for contemplative Black liberation theology and ecumenical mysticism.