Emma Hamilton Dancing

William S. Nelson was born on October 15, 1895 in Paris, Kentucky. He received his undergraduate degree from Howard University in Washington, DC, taking an interlude to serve as an Army infantry lieutenant in World War I before graduating in 1920. He studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, the Protestant Theological Seminary, and the Sorbonne in Paris, as well as two other universities in Germany, before receiving a bachelor of divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1924. He occupied several academic positions following his graduation, including teaching philosophy and religion at Howard University (1929-1931) and becoming the first Black president of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1931. He was subsequently the founding president of Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1936. He later served as dean of Howard’s School of Religion (1940-1948) and dean of the university (1948-1961).

Nelson was incredibly influential in the global movement for non-violent political action. He traveled to India multiple times in the 1940s and 1950s, and while there he marched with Mohandas Gandhi. He was in frequent contact with Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom he discussed the principles of non-violence, and was later also involved in the civil rights movement under these same non-violent principles, speaking at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and participating in the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. He taught courses at Howard about Gandhian non-violent action and was also a member of the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi.

Nelson died on March 26, 1977.