Howard Thurman Home

The Historic Howard Thurman Home is the childhood home of one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. A native son of Daytona Beach, Dr. Howard Thurman went on to become an important author and religious thinker and one of the most influential early voices shaping the nonviolent philosophy of the Modern Civil Rights Movement in America. Thurman was the first Dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University and a co-founder of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the first racially integrated church in the United States. In 1953, he became the first Black Dean of Chapel at a majority white college or university when he accepted the position of Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. Dr. Thurman served in this position until 1965. His most famous book, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949) profoundly influenced a young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a host of young activist and leaders in the Civil Rights movement.