Every generation has a person that serves as a beacon of success and perseverance that will touch the lives of many that he or she have, will, or never meet. These people play an instrumental role in the development of a generations “leaders of tomorrow”. Some may be famous on a national or international level, while other may be a hidden gem for someone to find and eventually excavate their being. The list of leaders that have helped establish not only this country, but this world is extremely vast and diverse stretching from the biblical era to current times. Yes, the list is very long and growing every single day, but there is an only one-leader teaching and influence that I believe will last until eternity is the honorable Dr. Benjamin
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Mays was the youngest out of eight children to two sharecroppers in the small town of Rambo, South Carolina. He always possessed a keen passion as to what he wanted to do in life and the first thing on his checklist was to receive a formal education, which would allow him to achieve certain “luxuries” that the educated would qualify for. During that time period a formal education for a child of sharecropper was extremely rare, but male African American was an even scarcer oddity in itself. Dr. Mays graduated from South Carolina State College at Orangeburg as the valedictorian in 1916 while only attending school one-third of the year. Although, Dr. Mays graduated valedictorian, his educational palette was still thirsty for knowledge. Not only was it odd for a poor young African American male to actually try to pursue a college education, but it was even more odd to have the type of tenacity Dr. Mays possessed at such a young age. At a point in time it would only seem as if Dr. Mays getting a education was just a pipe dream, because his father didn’t want him to be a educated African American male living in the South, but instead a sharecropper just like him. That was the impetus that pushed Dr. Mays to get a formal education by any means necessary, because he’d seen the struggle of raising eight children and sharecropping in the South. Dr. Mays eventually went on to go to Barnes College and get a job a professor and then eventually transition from Morris College to Howard and then back to Morehouse College as the
Mays was the youngest out of eight children to two sharecroppers in the small town of Rambo, South Carolina. He always possessed a keen passion as to what he wanted to do in life and the first thing on his checklist was to receive a formal education, which would allow him to achieve certain “luxuries” that the educated would qualify for. During that time period a formal education for a child of sharecropper was extremely rare, but male African American was an even scarcer oddity in itself. Dr. Mays graduated from South Carolina State College at Orangeburg as the valedictorian in 1916 while only attending school one-third of the year. Although, Dr. Mays graduated valedictorian, his educational palette was still thirsty for knowledge. Not only was it odd for a poor young African American male to actually try to pursue a college education, but it was even more odd to have the type of tenacity Dr. Mays possessed at such a young age. At a point in time it would only seem as if Dr. Mays getting a education was just a pipe dream, because his father didn’t want him to be a educated African American male living in the South, but instead a sharecropper just like him. That was the impetus that pushed Dr. Mays to get a formal education by any means necessary, because he’d seen the struggle of raising eight children and sharecropping in the South. Dr. Mays eventually went on to go to Barnes College and get a job a professor and then eventually transition from Morris College to Howard and then back to Morehouse College as the