During the early 1940s, Howard Thurman, a noted orator and writer, was dean of chapel and professor of religion at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington DC. He usually spent his summers on the road, traveling to conference centers, retreats, and churches.
Despite the wartime conditions, the summer of 1942 was no different. That July, his journeys took him as far west as California, where he attended a 10-day Race Relations institute at Whittier College. During that trip, he made it his business to visit an “Assembly Center” for Japanese-Americans, pre…