Teresa L.

Smallwood
Religion, Society & Culture
Howard Thurman Reflection Paper
February 16, 2010

With Head and Heart: the Autobiography of Howard Thurman is a true testament of how faith

performs an outworking in the life of the believer. Dr. Howard Thurman was truly an anomaly.

As I consider my reflection on Dubois’ The Negro Church, Dr. Thurman gives a life-sized example

in the truest sense of what Dr. Dubois seemed to be aiming for in his vision of a transformed

“negro.” Dr. Thurman’s life and legacy proves the theory that transcendence of race is a state of

mind. Dr. Thurman’s sojourn gives definition to this so-called transcendence. The critical

question for me is at what cost?

Dr. Howard Thurman’s autobiography reads like a book of miracles. His entire climb to

prominence signifies the power of the human will. I am in awe of this man’s academic prowess

and business acumen. He represents “the New Negro,” “the talented tenth,” and the meaning

of the Negro National Anthem all at the same time. His rise was not without some painful

trade-offs however. At a time when cries for Black Nationalism, the Harlem Renaissance and Jim

Crow were all converging to define the “negro,” E. Franklin Frazier wrote an essay he entitled

“La Bourgeoisie Noire,” which in part said:

It may seem conceivable to some that the Negro could have

contended on the ground of abstract right for unlimited
participation in American life on the basis of individual efficiency;
but the Negro had to deal with realities. It is strange that today
one expects this very class which represents the most civilized
group to be in revolt against the system by which it was created,
rather than the group of leaders who have sprung from the soil of
Negro culture.

1
 Here we are brought face to face with a fundamental dilemma of
Negro life. Dean Miler at Howard University once expressed this
dilemma aphoristically, namely, that the Negro pays for what he
wants and begs for what he needs. The Negro pays, on the whole
for his church, his lodges and fraternities and his automobile, but
he begs for his education.1

I contend Dr. Thurman gave little to no mention to his first wife save the fact of their marriage,

the birth of their child and brief mention of her illness and death because it was a painful

reminder of his ontological blackness. While I do not despair in this fact, it remains a glaring

clue together with his failure to acknowledge the wholesome soul work of artists such as

Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston, whose piece, Dust on the Tracks, suggests she was his

contemporary and begs the question of transcendence. Thurman would remark about his time

at Haverford “Paradoxically, in his presence, the specific issues of race with which I had been

confronted all of my life as a black man in America seemed strangely irrelevant.” 2

I cannot help but be impressed with all that Dr. Thurman represents and yet the internal

conflict will not go away. What does this level of scholarship cost? What does it cost to be

summoned by the president of Boston College to head the Chapel and join the staff when you

have poured your heart into the conceptualization of a church that transcends race and

culture? What does it cost to quote Browning when your brother pens “The Negro Speaks of

Rivers?” I guess the literary and social tension I feel contemplating and reflecting upon the life

of Howard Thurman is the substance of my own passion both to excel and to remain. It is the

classic wrestling with self that makes one become a mystic. It is the stuff of champions.
1
Quoted from Harlem Renaissance Reader, David Levering Lewis ed., (Viking: NY), 1994, 180.
2
Thurman, Howard, With Head and Heart: the Autobiography of Howard Thurman, (Harcourt Brace & Company:
NY), 1979, 77.