 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.