Before Morehouse, Mays had served as the dean of the Howard University School of Religion, where he worked with two of the most influential African American preachers of the early twentieth century, Mordecai Johnson and Howard Thurman. At Howard, these preachers had created a laboratory where the theologian Walter Rauschenbusch’s social gospel (that religious belief must be put in action to correct society’s flaws) and Mahatma Gandhi’s views on nonviolent resistance would be applied in fighting racial injustice.
