BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 10.

Howard Thurman passed away.

He was an American Baptist preacher and theologian, the first African American dean of chapel at a traditionally white American university, and a founder of the first interracial interfaith congregation in the United States.

Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.

Thurman traveled broadly, heading Christian missions and meeting with world figures such as Mahatma Gandhi.

He was a prolific author, writing twenty books on theology, religion, and philosophy. 

The most famous of his works, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), deeply influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders, both black and white, of the modern Civil Rights Movement. 

Howard University School of Divinity named their chapel the Thurman Chapel in memory of Howard Thurman.

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