Wife of Dr. Mays

Sadie M. Gray was born August 5, 1900 in Gray, Georgia. She was the daughter of James Seaman Gray and Emma Frances Blount Gray. Her paternal grandfather was James Madison Gray, a prominent white landowner in Jones County, Georgia who founded the city of Gray, Georgia in the 1850s. She was from large family. She had four older brothers and four older sisters. Two of her siblings would become professors at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. Her brother Emory would enter the dentistry.

MAYSSadie

She would attend Paine College in Augusta, GA and later earn a bachelor’s degree (1924) and Master’s degrees (1931) in Sociology at the University of Chicago’s Department of Social Service Administration. Following her graduation from the University of Chicago she took a position teaching at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg.

In 1925, Benjamin Elijah Mays returned to State College to teach English after earning an M.A. from the University of Chicago. Benjamin and Sadie were both on staff at State College during the 1925-26 academic year and began a courtship during this period. After months of courtship, they married on August 9, 1926.

They moved to Tampa, Florida from 1926-28 where she was a social worker for the National Urban League. They then moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1928 where she served as a social worker for the Georgia Study of Negro Child Welfare and taught at the Atlanta University School of Social Work. Her and her husband would attend graduate school at the University of Chicago where she would earn a master’s degree from Department of Social Service Administration. In 1934, her husband began a six year term as dean of religious studies at Howard University. During this period she was a social worker at the National Youth Administration, and also taught at Howard University.

Her husband was offered the presidency of Morehouse College on March 10, 1940 and inaugurated as the sixth president on August 1, 1940. He would serves as president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967. She taught at Spelman College during this time and was a frequent lecturer on social topics in Atlanta, focusing often on women’s issues. She would later work to establish the Atlanta Association for Convalescent Aged Persons and serve as its first president. This non-profit organization would open Happy Haven, a nursing home for the elderly black residents of Atlanta. Mrs. Sadie G. Mays was admitted to Happy Haven Nursing Home during the summer of 1969 and she passed away there on October 10, 1969. The nursing home was renamed the Sadie G. Mays Memorial Nursing Home on December 20, 1972, in honor of her memory. It is now the Sadie G. Mays Health and Rehabilitation Center in Atlanta, GA.