The Bahá’í Faith and African American History: Creating Racial and Religious Diversity

This book examines the intersection of African American history with that of the Bahá’í Faith in the United States. Since the turn of the twentieth century, Bahá’ís in America have actively worked to establish interracial harmony within its own ranks and to contribute to social justice in the wider community, becoming in the process one of the country’s most diverse religious bodies. Spanning from the start of the twentieth century to the early twenty-first, the essays in this volume examine aspects of the phenomenon of this religion confronting America’s original sin of racism and the significant roles African Americans came to play in the development of the Bahá’í Faith’s culture, identity, administrative structures, and aspirations.

Introduction by Loni Bramson
1. The Bahá’í “Pupil of the Eye” Metaphor: Promoting Ideal Race Relations in Jim Crow America by Christopher Buck

2. “The Most Vital and Challenging Issue”: The Bahá’í Faith’s Efforts to Improve Race Relations, 1922 to 1936 by Loni Bramson

3. Alain Locke on Race, Religion, and the Bahá’í Faith by Christopher Buck

4. The Most Challenging Issue Revisited: African American Bahá’í Women and the Advancement of Race and Gender Equality, 1899-1943 by Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis

5. Hand in Hand: Race, Identity, and Community Development among South Carolina’s Bahá’ís,1973-1979 by Louis Venters

6. Race Unity Efforts among American Bahá’ís: Institutionalized Tools and Empirical Evidence by Mike McMullen

7. Race, Place, and Clusters: Current Vision and Possible Strategies by June Manning Thomas

Conclusion by Multiple Authors of the Chapters in This Book