GREENWOOD, S.C. — Chris Thomas altered a stack of magazines on a desk in entrance of the museum. Loy Sartin wiped down and dusted oil lamps in the cabin. It was a significant working day for the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Web page.

Less than an hour later on, a bus crammed with kinfolk and descendants of the famous and influential civil legal rights theorist, moral philosopher and former Morehouse College or university president pulled into the parking large amount — the Mays family members was coming to tour the web page.

“This is the first time they’ve really occur for a tour,” Thomas mentioned. “They’ve been below most likely for each and every key function we have ever experienced at this web site. We have experienced actually, truly fantastic family participation.”

Mays, born in Greenwood County’s Epworth local community in 1894, was born to Louvenia and Hezekiah Mays soon after they were being freed from slavery. Mays would go on to problem strategies of white supremacy and African American inferiority, pursuing better instruction and earning a doctorate and getting the sixth president of historically Black Morehouse Faculty, as nicely as the 1st dean of the college of faith at Howard University.

Past his private accomplishments, Mays’ do the job and ethic motivated Civil Legal rights leaders, and he was a personal mentor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Mays traveled to India all through the Civil Legal rights motion and brought again with him the concepts of nonviolent civil resistance, which he handed on to his disciples. Mays famously eulogized King just after his assassination.

A great deal of that legacy is enshrined at the Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Web site at 229 N. Hospital St., exactly where members of his family collected from through the country to join with their roots. Dozens of them, donning matching reunion T-shirts of purple and gold, poured off their tour bus to discover about their familial historical past.

“He was a ethical influencer. In everything he did, he expressed to men and women a feeling of morality, and for him of course it was Christian morals,” Thomas said. “I’m honored to do this. I assume that…