Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays was born in 1894 in Greenwood, South Carolina, the youngest of eight children; his parents were tenant farmers and former slaves. After spending a year at Virginia Union University, he moved north to attend Bates College in Maine, where he obtained his B.A. in 1920, then entered the University of Chicago as a graduate student, earning an M.A. in 1925 and a Ph.D. in the School of Religion in 1935. While in graduate school Mays worked as a Pullman Porter. He also worked as a student assistant to Dr. Lacey Kirk Williams, pastor of Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago and President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.His education at Chicago was interrupted when he was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1922 and accepted a pastorate at the Shiloh Baptist Church of Atlanta. Dr. Mays later taught at Morehouse College and at South Carolina State College. At Morehouse, he was Martin Luther King Junior's mentor.