Buck, Christopher. “The Baha’i ‘Race Amity’ Movement and the Black Intelligentsia in Jim Crow America: Alain Locke and Robert S. Abbott.” Baha’i Studies Review 17 (2011): 3–46. [Published September 2012.]
EPIGRAPH:
I attended every session, day and night ... Many times throughout the meetings did with much effort restrain my tears. My heart leaped and throbbed and many times almost burst within my breast. I am a colored man ... My race as a whole, I believe, is quite ready to welcome the glad day when all will be brothers. ... The trouble is nearly unilateral. God give us the day.
— M. F. Harris, audience member at the ‘Convention for Amity Between the Colored and White Races Based on Heavenly Teachings’ (19–21 May 1921)
ABSTRACT:
This study demonstrates how the Baha’i ‘Race Amity’ efforts effectively reached the black intelligentsia during the Jim Crow era, attracting the interest and involvement of two influential giants of the period — Alain Leroy Locke, PhD (1885–1954) and Robert S. Abbott, LLB (1870–1940). Locke affiliated with the Baha’i Faith in 1918, and Abbott formally joined the Baha’i religion in 1934.
Another towering figure in the black intelligentsia, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) – whose first wife, Nina Du Bois (d. 1950), was a member of the New York Baha’i community — had sustained, for a period of time, considerable interest in the Baha’i movement, as documented in a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Religious History, guest edited by Todd Lawson. These illustrious figures — W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain L. Locke and Robert S. Abbott — are ranked as the 4th, 36th and 41st most influential African Americans in American history. It is not so much the intrinsic message of the Baha’i religion that attracted the interest of the black intelligentsia, but rather the Baha’i emphasis on ‘race amity’ — representing what, by Jim Crow standards, may be regarded as a socially audacious, even radical — application of the Baha’i ethic of world unity, from family relations to international relations, to the prevailing American social crisis.
EXCERPT:
On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, Professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, paid tribute to the historic Baha’i efforts to foster ideal race relations in America:
“When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.”
[“Towards Oneness - Cornel West” (1 February 2012). Online at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbEDC8wAWiI [updated link, accessed May 17, 2018.]
If and when, as suggested by Cornel West, a revisionist history of the Jim Crow era is written, the contribution of the Baha’i ‘race amity’ initiatives — envisioned and mandated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself — should take its rightful place in the annals of American history.