Benjamin Elijah Mays was a distinguished African American minister, educator, scholar, and social activist. Mays was born on August 1st, 1894 in a rural area outside Ninety-Six, South Carolina. He was the youngest of eight children born to the tenant farmers and former slaves, Louvenia Carter and Hezekiah Mays. An ongoing occurrence in Mays’s boyhood and early adulthood was his dedication for education against overwhelming odds. As Mays’s grew older, and after stumbling quite a bit, he gained acceptance to Bates College in Maine. After completing his B.A. there in 1920, Mays entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925 and a Ph.D. in the school of Religion in 1935. Mays‘s was married for
Benjamin Elijah Mays was a distinguished African American minister, educator, scholar, and social activist. Mays was born on August 1st, 1894 in a rural area outside Ninety-Six, South Carolina. He was the youngest of eight children born to the tenant farmers and former slaves, Louvenia Carter and Hezekiah Mays. An ongoing occurrence in Mays’s boyhood and early adulthood was his dedication for education against overwhelming odds. As Mays’s grew older, and after stumbling quite a bit, he gained acceptance to Bates College in Maine. After completing his B.A. there in 1920, Mays entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925 and a Ph.D. in the school of Religion in 1935. Mays‘s was married for