 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.