Howard Thurman

American mystic, minister and civil rights leader (1899–1981), grandson of a woman born into slavery. He was dean of chapel at Howard University and then at Boston University, co-founded the first major interracial, interdenominational church in the United States, and wrote Jesus and the Disinherited, the book Martin Luther King is said to have carried with him. His theology of radical nonviolence shaped a generation of activists.