44 BECOMING KING Mays saw the leadership and social philosophy of India’s Gandhi as a possible model for the direction in which African Americans should move to secure greater equality in the United States. During King’s junior year at Morehouse, Mays traveled to India, where he met Gandhi. Follow- ing the Indian leader’s death in early 1948, Mays wrote an article fondly recalling the ninety minutes they had spent together a year earlier. The primary topic of their discussion had been the use of nonviolence as a method for bringing about social change. Mays credited “the moral and spiritual power of non-violence” as the turning point in the struggle for Indian independence from Great Britain. While not a novel assessment, Mays’s articulation of this belief must have made an impression on young King. When looking for models and examples to hold up before his stu- dents at Morehouse, Mays found none more powerful than Gandhi’s 19 independence movement in India. Over his last eighteen months at Morehouse, King was in regular contact with a man who had met with and been inspired by Gandhi. Al- though King rarely mentioned Gandhi in his early religious writings and sermons, Mays’s enthusiastic articulation of his precepts planted seeds that would fully blossom years later as King entered into the heart of the struggle for civil rights in Montgomery. In one extant assignment sub- mitted for a course at Crozer, King did include a reference to the Indian leader as an example of one whose life demonstrated “the working of the Spirit of God.” While it would be many years before King would intensely study Gandhi’s life and strategies, part of the resonance of the Indian 20 movement with him can be linked to his exposure to Benjamin Mays. Although King may not have adopted nonviolence as a way of life until he found himself on the front lines of the struggle in Montgomery, he did subscribe to the Gandhian belief that the welfare of the oppressor must be taken into account in social struggle. Mays stressed this same theme in his speeches and articles, noting that discrimination “scars not only the soul of the segregated but the soul of the segregator as well.” From his student days onward, King consistently articulated that oppres- sors have value and are worthy of redemption. His hope was that by ap- pealing to the hearts of these churchgoing, God-worshiping southerners, not only would laws be transformed, but the spirits of white southerners would be redeemed. Even in his earliest sermons and religious writings,