GREENWOOD (AP).- A museum dedicated to the life of Benjamin E. Mays, an educator who was an early inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr. and who was often referred to as the father of the civil rights movement, opened Tuesday in his hometown of Greenwood.

Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who marched with King, pointed at Mays' small childhood home and said "It all started right over here," according to The Index-Journal of Greenwood.

Mays was president of Morehouse College in Atlanta when King graduated in 1948. King called Mays his intellectual father and credited Mays with leading him into the ministry. Mays died in 1984 at age 89.

The site, 75 miles west of Columbia, includes the Mays home, a 19th century one-room schoolhouse and a museum and interpretive center.



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