MLK's Mentor: The Man Who Built the Movement Benjamin Mays was called the "Schoolmaster of the Movement"—the man who built the minds behind the Civil Rights Movement. Born in 1894 to formerly enslaved parents in Jim Crow South Carolina, Mays became president of Morehouse College and mentored Martin Luther King Jr., whom King called his "spiritual and intellectual father." For 27 years, Mays shaped generations of Black leaders—Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, and countless others—teaching them digni