Sue Bailey Thurman (née Sue Elvie Bailey; August 26, 1903 – December 25, 1996) was an American author, lecturer, historian and civil rights activist. She briefly taught at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, before becoming involved in international work with the YWCA in 1930. During a six-month trip through Asia in the mid-1930s, Thurman became the first African-American woman to have an audience with Mahatma Gandhi.

The meeting with Gandhi inspired Thurman and her husband, theologian Howard Thurman, to promote non-violent resistance as a means of creating social change, bringing it to the attention of a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. While she did not actively protest during the Civil Rights Movement, she served as spiritual counselors to many on the front lines, and helped establish the first interracial, non-denominational church in the United States.

Thurman played an active role in establishing international student organizations to help prevent foreign students feeling isolated while studying abroad. She organized one of the first international scholarship programs for African-American women. She studied racism and the effects of prejudice on various people throughout the world, making two round-the-world trips in her lifetime. She wrote books and newspaper articles to preserve black heritage, and initiated the publishing efforts of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) by founding the Aframerican Women's Journal. In addition to writing the second ever history of black Californians, in 1958 Thurman published The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro, laced with historical information about black professional women at a time when African Americans had few civil rights. Recognizing that there was little academic interest in black women's history at the time, Thurman used the marketing ploy of food to report on the lives of black women who were not domestics. She participated in international peace and feminist conferences, and in 1945 attended the San Francisco Conference for the founding of the United Nations as part of an unofficial delegation. Thurman also established museums such as the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston in 1963.

Thurman and her husband retired in San Francisco in 1965. She worked with the San Francisco Public Library in 1969 to develop resources for black history of the American West. In 1979 she was honored with a Centennial Award at Spelman College, sharing the recognition with UNESCO director Herschelle Sullivan Challenor. After her husband's death in 1981, Thurman took over the management of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, which funded research for literary, religious and scientific purposes and assisted in scholarships for black students. On her death in 1996, she left the couple's vast archives to numerous universities.

Sue Elvie Bailey was born on August 26, 1903, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to Reverend Isaac and Susie (née Ford) Bailey. She attended primary school at Nannie Burroughs' School for Girls in Washington, D.C. In 1920, she graduated from the college preparatory school, Spelman Seminary (now Spelman College) in Atlanta, Georgia. She continued her education at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, graduating in 1926 with bachelor's degrees in music and liberal arts. Despite citations that Sue Bailey Thurman was the first black student to earn a music degree from Oberlin, the music program's first black graduate was Harriet Gibbs Marshall in 1889. While a student at Oberlin College, Bailey developed a friendship with Louise Thompson, who would become a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, and encouraged Langston Hughes, inventor of jazz poetry, to read poetry there. She traveled with a quintet giving concerts in Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia, as well as London and Paris.

After graduating, Thurman took a post as a music teacher at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, but did not enjoy the work. One of the issues at Hampton was that her friend, Louise Thompson, also a teacher there, had written anonymously to W. E. B. Du Bois, co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), complaining about conditions at the college under the predominantly white administration. Although Bailey was suspected of writing the letter after Du Bois published it in the NAACP's journal The Crisis, she did not betray Thompson but instead invited Langston Hughes to Hampton for a poetry reading and moral support. Nevertheless, she left Hampton in 1930 to become a traveling National Secretary for the Student Division of the YWCA. She lectured throughout Europe and established the first World Fellowship Committee of the YWCA. On June 12, 1932, in the dining hall at Lincoln Academy, Kings Mountain, North Carolina, Bailey married Howard W. Thurman (1900–1981), a minister, who would become a social critic, writer and dean of several prominent US universities. At the time of their marriage, he was serving as Dean of Rankin Chapel and Professor of Systematic Theology at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

In 1935, the couple embarked upon a six-month trip through southern Asia, visiting Burma, Ceylon and India, culminating in a "Pilgrimage of Friendship" to the International Student Conference in India. Her husband led the American delegation, lecturing at more than forty universities, while Thurman herself was asked to meet with journalists and students, to discuss race relations and evaluate the parallels between the situation with Indians and the British and the African Americans and white Americans. Initially, Howard had turned down the opportunity and his wife was not included in the offer, but when the trip was finally agreed, both were participants. Thurman was not chosen simply as the wife of Howard Thurman but, in the words of the committee, because she was one of "four persons best able to do this particular job". This decision was remarkable for the period given that black women were often invisible members of society and generally prohibited from authoritative roles in social welfare programs. Thurman lectured during the trip on negro women and the organizations to which they belonged, as well as internationalism and culture. During their meeting with Rabindranath Tagore in Santiniketan she presented a paper "The History of Negro Music", though initially she had been reluctant to discuss slave music. She finally agreed only after Tagore and Gandhi explained that to Asian Christians, negro spirituals were deemed to express the profound faith of people even in bondage and seemed more authentic than western hymns. Thurman both sang and taught songs to local choirs. She also commented on art, having acquired knowledge on the subject during an earlier trip to Mexico.

The couple met with Mahatma Gandhi, becoming the first African Americans to have an audience with him. When Thurman asked him to take his message to the United States, he demurred as his work in India and his personal quest there were not finished. One important aspect of the meeting was a discussion of how non-violent resistance could be used as a means of creating social change. The meeting had a profound effect on the couple, changing the direction of their lives. Though they would remain Christians, the meeting with Gandhi led them to consider establishing a church free of prejudice, transcending racial, social, economic and spiritual boundaries. After they returned to the United States, Howard received a letter from A. J. Muste on behalf of Alfred Fisk who was looking for someone to establish a church in San Francisco which crossed the racial and spiritual divides. Muste was hopeful that Rev. Thurman might know of a divinity student interested in the position. Instead, Howard decided to take up the challenge himself, securing a leave of absence in order to found the church. Thurman went with him bringing their two daughters, as she strongly believed in the cause.