First and most important, thanks must go to the generation of scholars and archivists who have worked for many years with the Thurman papers, now at Boston University, and in the process produced five volumes of his papers along with two edited volumes of his sermons and other writings. These keepers of the Thurman flame have made possible this book and many others previously published and yet to come.
My thanks to Robert Sackett, my departmental colleague, for reading the manuscript and giving it a thorough edit; to friends and professional colleagues Randal Jelks and Stephen Prothero for offering early encouragement; to Stetson University, for providing me the opportunity to give a series of endowed lectures that served as a kind of first draft for my writing about Thurman; to Jason Sexton and the online magazine Boom California, for encouraging me to write on Thurman’s years in San Francisco; and to numerous friends and colleagues in the field of African American religious history, who have taught me so much over the years.
And finally, thanks to David Bratt, Heath Carter, Mark Noll, and my former coauthor Kathryn Gin Lum for encouraging me in this project and seeing it through the process to be included in the Library of Religious Biography series at Eerdmans.