Abstract
Bahá’u’lláh, the prophet-founder of the Bahá’i religion, proclaimed his faith in 1863, the same year as the emancipation of the African-American slaves.1 Few among these early Bahá’i believers realized that as they were planting the seeds of their new world faith, calling for the unity of all people, that those seeds would grow and spread into a diverse community of believers, which would include the descendants of African slaves in the United States. Former African-American slaves, bent over hoe and cotton, moaning and singing their signature songs of hope, could only pray that one day there would be a world faith that would not only embrace them, but celebrate their unique spiritual qualities as special gifts and contributions “… much needed in the world today.”2
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Notes
John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom, 6th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1988) 190
Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmetre, IL: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1957) p. 155.
William S. Hatcher and J. Douglas Martin, The Faith: The Emerging Global Religion, revised edition (Wilmette, IL: Publishing Trust, 1997).
Helen Bassett Hornby (compiled), Lights of Guidance: A Bahá’i Reference File, 3rd revised edition (New Delhi, India: Bahá’i Publishing Trust, Post Box 19, 1994) 533.
Baha ‘u’ llah, The Hidden Words, trans. Shoghi Effendi (London: Nightingale Books, 1992) 29.
Robert H. Stockman, The Bahá’i Faith in America: Origins, 1892–1900, Vol. 1 (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’i Publishing Trust, 1985) 139.
May Maxwell, An Early Pilgrimage (Oxford: George Roland, 1969) 20–21
Gayle Morrison
C. Eric Lincoln, Race, Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma, revised edition (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999) 23–59
Diana L. Hayes and O.S.B. Cyprian Davis eds., Taking Down Our Harps: Black Catholics in the United States (Mary Knoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998)
Joel L. Alvis, Jr., Religion and Race: Southern Presbyterians, 1946–1983 (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1994)
Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).
Ernest D. Mason “Alain Locke’s Social Philosophy,” World Order 7, 13 (Winter 1978–79): 25–26.
Quoted in Allen L. Ward, 239 Days: Abdul Baha’s Journey in America (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’i Publishing Trust, 1977) 40.
Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1955) 13–14
Peter Smith The Baha’i Religion: A short Introduction to its History and Teaching (Oxford: George Ronald, 1988) 4
John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, 7th edition, col. 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1998) 208.
George M. Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981)
Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1965) 261–64
George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: Harper and Row, 1980) 68
Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette, IL: Publishing Trust, 1939) 31.
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© 2006 Gayle T. Tate and Lewis A. Randolph
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Thomas, R.W. (2006). “The Pupil of the Eye:” African Americans and the Making of the American Community, 1898–2003. In: The Black Urban Community. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73572-3_10
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