The Influence of Olive Schreiner on Howard Thurman and, through Thurman, on Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1925, Howard Thurman, a prolific African American scholar, writer, and theologian, was introduced to the writings of Olive Schreiner. This chapter will use Thurman’s A Track to the Water’s Edge: The Olive Schreiner Reader (1973) as an entry point to explore the complex transnational influences of Schreiner’s life and writing on Thurman. Additionally, this chapter will argue that connections may be drawn between Olive Schreiner and American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr, through Schreiner’s impact on Thurman. That Thurman had a profound influence on King (and other civil rights leaders), particularly with regard to notions of social transformation and non-violence, is well-documented. This chapter considers a range of material drawn from Schreiner’s letters and published writings to trace a complex ideological trajectory from the life, thought and writings of Schreiner (1855-1920) to the Civil Rights movement (1954-1968) of Black Americans in the United States.