Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: Side One: Born in West Palm Beach in 1899, Dr. Howard Washington Thurman spent much of his childhood in this house. Built circa 1888, the house was owned by Nancy Ambrose, Thurman’s maternal grandmother, a former slave whose faith influenced his own. At the age of one, Thurman moved with his family to live with his grandmother in Daytona Beach. Family friend Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune was a mentor to Thurman, and her work in African American education influenced him greatly. While in Daytona, he was able to finish the 8th grade, an opportunity rarely afforded to African Americans in the area at that time. Thurman moved to Jacksonville to attend secondary school at the Florida Baptist Academy. He continued his education at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and was graduated in 1923 as valedictorian. In 1925, he was ordained as a Baptist minister after completing seminary training at the Colgate-Rochester School of Divinity in New York. The school only accepted two black students per year. In the late 1920s, Thurman transitioned from student to teacher, working at multiple religious and educational institutions. In 1929, he returned to Atlanta to serve as the Director of Religious Life at Morehouse College. Side Two: From 1932 until 1944, Thurman served as the first Dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University, where he became one of the most influential early voices shaping the nonviolent philosophy of the modern Civil Rights Movement in America. In a 1935 pilgrimage to India, Thurman led the first African American delegation to meet with nonviolent resistance leader Mahatma Gandhi. This experience led him in 1944 to cofound the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California. It is an interracial and interdenominational Christian church, described by Thurman as “a pilot development of the integrated church movement in America.” Thurman published his most famous book, Jesus and the Disinherited, in 1949, a work that would go on to influence a host of activists and leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, including a young Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1953, Harold C. Case, the president of the predominantly-white Boston University, appointed Thurman as the first black Dean of Marsh Chapel. He served in the position until 1965. As a result of Thurman’s contributions to education, African American civil rights, and religious integration, this house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.