Sue Bailey Thurman

American writer (1903–1996)
British Paralympic table tennis player

Sue Bailey Thurman (née Sue Elvie Bailey; August 26, 1903 – December 25, 1996) was an American author, lecturer, historian and civil rights activist. She was the first non white student to earn a bachelor's degree in music from Oberlin College, Ohio. She briefly taught at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, before becoming involved in international work with the YWCA in 1930. During a six month trip through Asia in the mid 1930s, Thurman became the first African American woman to have an audience with Mahatma Gandhi. The meeting with Gandhi inspired Thurman and her husband, theologian Howard Thurman, to promote non violent resistance as a means of creating social change, bringing it to the attention of a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. While she did not actively protest during the Civil Rights Movement, she served as spiritual counselors to many on the front lines, and helped establish the first interracial, non denominational church in the United States. Thurman played an active role in establishing international student organizations to help prevent foreign students feeling isolated while studying abroad. She organized one of the first international scholarship programs for African American women. She studied racism and the effects of prejudice on various people throughout the world, making two round the world trips in her lifetime. She wrote books and newspaper articles to preserve black heritage, and initiated the publishing efforts of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) by founding the Aframerican Women's Journal. In addition to writing the second ever history of black Californians, in 1958 Thurman published a cookbook laced with historical information about black professional women at a time when African Americans had few civil rights. Recognizing that there was little academic interest in black women's history at the time, Thurman used the marketing ploy of food to report on the lives of black women who were not domestics. She participated in international peace and feminist conferences, and in 1945 attended the San Francisco Conference for the founding of the United Nations as part of an unofficial delegation. Thurman also established museums such as the Museum of Afro American History in Boston in 1963. Thurman and her husband retired in San Francisco in 1965. She worked with the San Francisco Public Library in 1969 to develop resources for black history of the American West. In 1979 she was honored with a Centennial Award at Spelman College, sharing the recognition with UNESCO director Herschelle Sullivan Challenor. After her husband's death in 1981, Thurman took over the management of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, which funded research for literary, religious and scientific purposes and assisted in scholarships for black students. On her death in 1996, she left the couple's vast archives to numerous universities.

Sue Elvie Bailey was born on August 26, 1903, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to Reverend Isaac and Susie (née Ford) Bailey. She attended primary school at Nannie Burroughs' School for Girls in Washington, D. C. She continued her education at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, graduating in 1926 with bachelor's degrees in music and liberal arts. the music program's first black graduate was Harriet Gibbs Marshall in 1889. While a student at Oberlin College, Bailey developed a friendship with Louise Thompson, who would become a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, and encouraged Langston Hughes, inventor of jazz poetry, to read poetry there. She traveled with a quintet giving concerts in Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia, as well as London and Paris. She lectured throughout Europe and established the first World Fellowship Committee of the YWCA. On June 12, 1932, in the dining hall at Lincoln Academy, Kings Mountain, North Carolina, Bailey married Howard W. Thurman (1900–1981), a minister, who would become a social critic, writer and dean of several prominent US universities. At the time of their marriage, he was serving as Dean of Rankin Chapel and Professor of Systematic Theology at Howard University in Washington, D. C. Initially, Howard had turned down the opportunity and his wife was not included in the offer, but when the trip was finally agreed, both were participants. Thurman was not chosen simply as the wife of Howard Thurman but, in the words of the committee, because she was one of "four persons best able to do this particular job". This decision was remarkable for the period given that black women were often invisible members of society and generally prohibited from authoritative roles in social welfare programs. Thurman lectured during the trip on negro women and the organizations to which they belonged, as well as internationalism and culture. During their meeting with Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan she presented a paper "The History of Negro Music", though initially she had been reluctant to discuss slave music. She finally agreed only after Tagore and Gandhi explained that to Asian Christians, negro spirituals were deemed to express the profound faith of people even in bondage and seemed more authentic than western hymns. Thurman both sang and taught songs to local choirs. She also commented on art, having acquired knowledge on the subject during an earlier trip to Mexico. The couple met with Mahatma Gandhi, becoming the first African Americans to have an audience with him. One important aspect of the meeting was a discussion of how non violent resistance could be used as a means of creating social change. Though they would remain Christians, the meeting with Gandhi led them to consider establishing a church free of prejudice, transcending racial, social, economic and spiritual boundaries. After they returned to the United States, Howard received a letter from A. J. Muste on behalf of Alfred Fisk who was looking for someone to establish a church in San Francisco which crossed the racial and spiritual divides. Muste was hopeful that Rev. Thurman might know of a divinity student interested in the position. Instead, Howard decided to take up the challenge himself, securing a leave of absence in order to found the church. Thurman went with him bringing their two daughters, as she strongly believed in the cause.

Thurman established the Juliette Derricotte Scholarship in the late 1930s, which allowed African American undergraduate women of high academic achievement to study and travel abroad. The first two recipients of the scholarship were Marian Banfield of Howard University and Anna V. Brown of Oberlin College. Banfield was a goddaughter of Howard Thurman. The following year the recipients of her scholarship were Elizabeth McCree from Boston, who attended Fisk University, and Margaret Bush Wilson of Talladega College. toward creating the National Council of Negro Women's National Library, Archives, and Museum. In 1943, and pressing for scholarship exchanges for negro students at Indian universities. It was from the Thurmans and their talks and writings that Martin Luther King Jr. learned of non violent resistance as a means of social protest. By 1944, the church which they had envisioned after their meeting with Gandhi became a reality when they, along with Fisk, opened the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. It was the first interracial, non denominational church in the United States. Thurman, as a representative for the NCNW, attended the Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres held in Guatemala City, Guatemala, in 1947. The congress addressed many of the issues she supported such as women's rights, internationalism, and peace initiatives. In 1949, she led a delegation of members from the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples to Paris for the Fourth Plenary Session of UNESCO. It was the second history of black Californians published—the first being The Negro Trail Blazers of California by Delilah L. Beasley in 1919—and filled a gap caused by a lack of academic interest. History in America, at the time, was written about men and almost exclusively about white men. Neither of the women who wrote about the history of blacks in California was a native Californian. From the beginning, Thurman tried to create an inclusive environment, organizing monthly dinners for the Marsh Chapel Choir members and their friends. Shortly after they arrived, a Japanese student committed suicide leaving a note that she had no friends. Not only was she not known well at the university, finding her family to notify them was difficult. In response, Thurman organized the International Student Hostess Committee to keep international students from feeling isolated. The Thurmans were at times criticized by those who felt they should be visibly active in the Civil Rights Movement, but they believed their commitment was to addressing the spiritual needs of those who were visible, rather than participating in marches, protests and demonstrations. Among the papers of MLK were many letters from people such as Homer A. Jack, who co founded the Congress of Racial Equality; Lillian Smith, author of the novel Strange Fruit; Glenn E. Smiley, national field secretary of Fellowship of Reconciliation, as well as King's own acknowledgement, which credited their spiritual guidance. Thurman continued her writing work in Boston. In 1958, she published The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro, which not only gave recipes but included black history. It retold stories of professional women and history to counter the belief that all black women were maids and domestics at a time when African Americans were excluded from basic civil rights. She recognized that in order to tell their history, a new approach was needed as there was no market for histories of the African Americans. In the preface to her book, she explained she was creating "palatable history", testifying to her shrewd marketing ability. During the 1960s, the Thurmans traveled widely, making various trips to study racial barriers that prohibited creation of community. In 1962, they journeyed to Saskatchewan, Canada, to meet with tribal leaders about discrimination and in 1963, they embarked on a trip that included Nigeria, Israel, Hawaii, and California. In Nigeria, Howard Thurman lectured at the University of Ibadan. The couple's second round the world tour took them to Japan, the Philippines and Egypt. Interested in history, she had discovered a settlement where free blacks had lived prior to the Civil War and their 1808 African Meeting House, which housed both Boston's first black church and the first segregated public school in the United States. The museum was created to save the site and provide a means to purchase other significant properties for preservation of African American heritage in the area. The map highlighted twenty two points of interest to black history within the city of Boston and was in part created to give black school children a sense that they were part of the history of the city. What is today known as the Black Heritage Trail was adapted from Thurman's original idea. While in Boston, in 1962, Thurman arranged for the sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller to create a commissioned "freedom plaque" for Livingstone College, of Salisbury, North Carolina. Bailey was an invited speaker at Livingstone in 1963 and at that time, in honor of United Nations Day, she donated a collection of dolls representing the member nations to the college. As far back as the 1930s, Thurman had collected ethnic dolls and given them to universities to promote understanding of cultural differences.

Howard Thurman took retirement from Boston University in 1965 and the couple moved back to San Francisco. In the 1970s, the couple took a trip to the Pacific basin. In 1979 she was honored with a Centennial Award at Spelman College, sharing the recognition with UNESCO director Herschelle Sullivan Challenor. After her husband's death, in 1981, Thurman took over the management of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, and stepmother to Olive Thurman, her husband's daughter with his first wife. Olive was the first wife of actor Victor Wong. Thurman died on Christmas Day, 1996, at the San Francisco Zen Buddhist Hospice Center. and several other institutions like the National Council of Negro Women's archives in Washington, D. C and libraries in Arkansas named for her mother, Mrs. Susie Ford Bailey.