Sue Bailey Thurman advocate for peace by Cora Saddler
Sue Bailey Thurman was an American author, lecturer, historian and civil rights activist, an advocate for interracial, intercultural, and international understanding, peace and fellowship. She and her husband, Howard Washington Thurman, who has been called the grandfather of the civil rights movement, are also known as the nation’s first African-American power couple. Sue Bailey was the youngest of 10 children born to a prominent Black family in Pine Bluff, Ark. Her father was a minister, the Rev. Isaac Bailey; and her mother, Susie, was an educator who was also active in multiple Black women’s organizations and the YWCA at both the local and national level. Sue Bailey graduated from Spelman Seminary in Atlanta in 1920 and was the first non-white student to earn a bachelor’s degree in music and liberal arts from Oberlin College in 1926. She worked as national traveling secretary for the YWCA’s college division, lectured throughout Europe, and established the first World Fellowship Committee of the YWCA. Bailey’s inspiration was Juliette Derricotte, the YWCA secretary of National Student Council and later the dean of women at Howard University, who believed high-achieving women of color should be able to travel the world and be inspired by their counterparts. Bailey established a scholarship so African American undergraduate women could study and travel abroad. It was the youth, she believed, who had the capability to bridge gaps in cultural understanding. Her future husband, Howard Thurman, was born in Daytona Beach, Florida and raised by his grandmother, a former slave who never accepted those boundaries for him, because he was “a child of God.” Thurman left home at age 14 to pursue his education because his hometown did not provide for Black children past the seventh grade. A single act of kindness changed the course of his life. Waiting for the train to take him to Jacksonville, Thurman found himself with enough money for the fare, but not enough for luggage. Thurman would later dedicate his autobiography to that “anonymous stranger” on the train platform who paid the fee and “restored his broken dreams.” Thurman was the first Black child from Daytona to earn a high school diploma. He then graduated from Morehouse College, a historically black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta in 1923 and earned his BD from Colgate Rochester
12
Divinity School in New York in 1926. As valedictorian there, he encountered many emerging Black leaders of the 20th century. Both Bailey and Thurman had social ties to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. long before the civil rights movement. Thurman and Dr. King’s father graduated from Morehouse a few years apart and remained close during King’s boyhood. Bailey had been good friends at Spelman with Alberta Williams, who would later become Dr. King’s mother. Married in 1932, the Thurmans traveled with the Rev. Edward and Phenola Carroll on a “Pilgrimage of Friendship” to Burma, Ceylon and India in late 1935 and early 1936. They were invited by the Student Christian Movements of the United States and India. General secretary of the Indian Student Christian Movement A. Ralla Ram argued for the inclusion of the Thurmans and Carrolls because of their unique perspective as Black Christians; Christianity at the time was considered the oppressor religion in India. Thurman gave 135 lectures in over 50 cities. Sue Bailey Thurman also lectured on Black women and internationalism. She advocated for female empowerment in India to create a sense of international solidarity among women of color. The delegation became the first African Americans to meet Mohandas Gandhi. Over three hours, they discussed racial segregation, lynching, African American history and religion, Gandhi’s perspective on the African American struggle in the U.S., and the redemptive power of ahimsa – “do no harm” – which was later rephrased as nonviolence. Sue Bailey, meanwhile, challenged Gandhi to expand the role of women. And because she held the music degree, her husband urged her to lead the group in singing Black spirituals: in particular, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” In response, Gandhi bowed his head in prayer. Thurman came home revitalized in his spiritual thinking. The Black social gospel tradition, he realized, should be wider than an individual congregation. It should encompass society. Inner spirituality should be paired with community action.
