Sue Bailey Thurman, Promoter of Intercultural Relations
Date1942
Artist
Loïs Mailou Jones
(American artist and teacher, 1905–1998)
Illustration CitationTwelve American Women Calendar, 1942
MediumInk and wash on paper
Dimensions13 × 10 in. (33 × 25.4 cm)
support: 20 1/2 × 16 1/2 in. (52.1 × 41.9 cm)
support: 20 1/2 × 16 1/2 in. (52.1 × 41.9 cm)
Credit LineAcquisition Fund, 2021
Object number2021-2
On View
On viewCollections
ClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextThis drawing was produced for a calendar featuring portraits and biographies of twelve distinguished African American women. The subject for April was Sue Bailey Thurman, a writer, lecturer, historian, and civil rights activist. She graduated from Spelman Seminary and then from Oberlin College. She worked for the YWCA as national traveling secretary for the college division. In 1932 she married Dr. Howard Thurman, a religious and social leader, and her work became closely tied to his ministry and diplomatic work. Sue Bailey Thurman was an advocate for Black women, founding the Aframerican Women’s Journal and founding women’s organizations at Howard and Boston University. She also founded the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston and wrote several books. In 1935 and 1936 she traveled to India and Burma, as part of an African American delegation. She met with Mohandas Gandhi to discuss the use of nonviolent resistance to effect social change in the United States. In 1940 she led the delegation of members of the Fellowship Church (an interracial, interreligious church) to the Fourth Plenary Session of UNESCO in Paris, hence her description here as a “promoter of intercultural relations.”
