James Hudson

A brilliant philosopher and his

influence on the rise of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement



While

intellectual histories of the civil rights movement often center Martin Luther

King Jr.'s writings, author Larry Omar Rivers argues that this approach leaves

out the scholar-activists who set the path for King. In this volume, Rivers

tells the mostly unknown story of James Hudson (1903-1980), a Black

philosopher, Florida A&M University professor, activist, and religious

leader whose philosophical contributions laid a key piece of the groundwork for

the emergence of the civil rights movement.

Drawing on little-used primary source documents and original

interviews with people who knew Hudson well, Rivers examines how Hudson's

training at Morehouse College, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, and Boston

University shaped his scholar-activism, including his decision to become a

Personalist philosopher. As Rivers shows, Hudson crafted an influential

philosophy of life--a blend of Socratic inquiry, moral imagination, African American

spirituality, and Gandhian nonviolence--that became an essential foundation for

the rise of King, another Personalist philosopher. The book also sheds new

light on the connections between the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the

lesser-known 1956 Tallahassee Bus Boycott, which together helped spark the formation

of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

This long-overdue biography is not

only an insightful exploration of the intellectual and activist landscape of

the Black community from the 1930s to the 1960s but also the story of an unsung

hero and his involvement with important scholarly communities that influenced

the trajectory of the civil rights movement.



Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities

through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the

Humanities.