When Howard Thurman spoke, he filled the entire room with compassion, truth, keen intellect, and joy. To be in his presence was to experience the drama of life itself-with all its attending conflicts-and to be carried beyond these realities to the Reality of a gracious God whose will is life and wholeness.

Howard Thurman was a graduate from Morehouse College and from Colgate-Rochester Theological Seminary. He then became a special student of philosophy in residence at Haverford College with Rufus Jones, the noted Quaker philosopher and mystic. After serving on the faculty of Howard University as Professor of Theology and Dean of Rankin Chapel (1932-44), he moved to San Francisco to help found the intercultural and interdenominational Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. In 1953 he became Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University (1953-65).

Friends United Press and Howard Thurman began their association in 1971 with the paperback edition of The Inward Journey. Since then, eleven other titles have been added to the Thurman paperback series. Howard Thurman's close relationship to Quakers dates back to 1929 when, he began independent study at Haverford College with Rufus M. Jones. Thurman first discovered Rufus Jones through his book, Finding the Trail of Life. "When I finished (the book) I knew that if this man were alive, I wanted to study with him," wrote Thurman in his autobiography.

Other Howard Thurman Sites of Interest

  • Howard Thurman Titles at the Friends United Press Shopping Center

  • Howard Washington Thurman Memorial.
    Howard Thurman graduated from Morehouse College in 1923. The Chapel for the Inward Journey and a Howard Thurman Meditation Room are in Sale Hall on the Morehouse College Campus in Atlanta, Georgia. The Howard Washington Thurman Memorial on the Morehouse College campus was dedicated in the mid-1990s. The stone bell tower is in the shape of an obelisk. The memorial is surrounded by flags and a reflection pool.

  • The Howard Thurman House
    Howard Thurman was born in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1900. He spent most of his childhood in this two-story frame house on Whitehall Street.

  • Additional Photos

 

“The ocean and the night together surrounded my little life with a reassurance that could not be affronted by the behavior of human beings,” wrote Thurman. “The ocean at night gave me a sense of timelessness, of existing beyond the reach of the ebb and flow of circumstances. Death would be a minor thing, I felt, in the sweep of that natural embrace.”
  —From With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman by Howard Thurman (Harcourt, Brace & Company. 1979)

 

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