 Greetings and welcome to this discussion of racism and racial justice as informed by the Baha'i writings. I'm very happy to be with you today. I would like to talk about this problem of racism by starting with some of the insights that we gained, particularly in mid-century US from Shoghi Effendi. Then I would like to talk about how the reality of that racism reflected itself within everyday life within that one state as representative of other states in the Union as well, as well as how the conditions were therefore set for what evolved in terms of the nature of growth of the Baha'i community. So thank you for joining me. I will turn to a PowerPoint presentation which I have prepared for you. So this problem that we have now that is the bifurcation of the nation, much of it related to race really has come to a head. One of the things that Kim Bowers, Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly said at the most recent National Convention, which is posted as a recording, is that we now have such tribalism within this country that we can't even agree upon what is true. So a lot of this relates to a history of racial conflict and racism, and that's what I'd like to talk about today. So this US racism, what do we know about it? Well, actually, we know quite a lot about in particular what Shoghi Effendi said about the nature of racism when he wrote from the late 1930s until the mid 1950s, and two books in particular provide information about what he saw as the effects of racism on American society. So what were some key concepts? One is that he referred to that racism as a patent evil that's affecting the nation. He said in the advent of divine justice, it is precisely by reason of the patent evils which have affected this country that the author of the revelation shows this country as the cradle of the administrative order, and basically said that it was this country that would lead the world into the Baha'i Faith. Another concept was that there was virulent and longstanding prejudice. He referred to this as well in the advent of divine justice. It is by such means, he said, as this, that Baha'u'llah can best demonstrate to a heedless generation his almighty power to raise up from the very midst of a people who are enmeshed in one of the most virulent and longstanding forms of racial prejudice, and people such as members of the Baha'i community who could lead it away from that longstanding problem. Another key concept was that we have cracks and heaves and the social structure of American society that are affecting it in many ways. And the quotations about that comes from Citadel of Faith, which includes letters that he wrote up until the mid 1950s. And he said, as the fabric of present day society heaves and cracks under stress and strain and he went on to say that one of those stresses was the bifurcation between the races. Another comment that he said is that this history of racism darkens the outlooks of people in this country. And he refers to that also in that book of letters Citadel of Faith. When he says that this gross materialism attachment to worldly goods, as well as prejudices and animosities among American citizens has created this darkened outlook. So many people are familiar with his statement that the most vital and challenging issue is to address this racial prejudice. I think what many people do not think about is the fact that he was mostly addressing Baha'is he said within the Baha'i community. This was the most vital and challenging issue at that stage of development. Other descriptors were really about American society at large that the society was experiencing a patent, either a virulent and long standing prejudice, etc. So bad that he said, if there was not some change in the attitude of the average white American this could cause the streets of American cities to run with blood. So what show you Fendi is doing here is giving us a synopsis of the effects of racism on American society in general. And so this was an outward oriented commentary. He was describing current conditions at that time in the 40s and 50s. And then of course he talked about alternatives that were possible because of the revelation of Baha'u'llah and what were some of those key concepts. One of course, as we know is the unity of humanity and so much of the Baha'i revelation relates to the potential for the unity of humanity. Another he said that let neither think he was addressing this comment to what were called Negroes at that time and whites. And he said that neither should think that the task related to just one or the other. And this was addressed to Baha'is but also to the world at large that we need to come together in order to create a pathway out of this quagmire within which we find ourselves. He also exhorted the Baha'is in particular to cultivate freedom from prejudice and every setting, whether social or not in public or private venues. Many times about the example of Abdul Baha and how he showed how we should be in terms of letting go of racial prejudice. He said if any discrimination at all should be tolerated, it should be discrimination in favor of the minority instead of against it. And that the society had obligation to nurture and safeguard minorities in particular the Baha'i community had an obligation to nurture and safeguard minorities. And he was well as to place faith in their capacities and he demonstrated that in several ways, such as putting out calls to all races to uplift the banner of Baha'u'llah, or helping us understand the importance of the leadership of such people as Lewis Gregory. In such writing and such concepts, he laid out a vision that was anti-racist that was helping us to see what we could do if we began to give up the common parlance of racial prejudice and actions related to racial prejudice. And this was true most particularly within the Baha'i community but in society at large as well. So I've been spending a lot of time, perhaps the past four or five years studying the history of the civil rights movement in South Carolina. And it struck me that that society in which I grew up actually reflected many of the negative qualities that Shoveya Fendi talked about the patent evil, the virulent and longstanding prejudice, the dark and outlooks, the heaths and cracks in social structure. And we consider these so we put those off to the side. What, what did that mean? Well, it meant a society torn apart by racial prejudice and so it was just the normal course of events, and the normal understanding that there were quite apparently two societies. In this one state that was representative of the Deep South, there was the Black Society and there was the White Society and this was encoded in law and in social action. One manifestation of this was separate but unequal public accommodations. And so many of us when we think of that era we think of the signs, the colored and white signs for water fountains or for theaters or beaches or something of that sort. But that was just a physical manifestation of the separation of the races. Another was separate and grossly unequal public education and that's what I was studying in my own research. And so, dating from late 1900s, certain states had systematically decided to purposefully make education for Black people inferior to education for white people. Another manifestation was the suppression of voting rights. I've also written something about that lately. But this was essentially making it almost impossible if not very, very difficult for Black citizens to exercise their rights as citizens to vote. And then institutional racism and economic oppression permeated the society in cities as well as in rural areas. So as I said, most of my research was on separate and grossly unequal public education. So I'd like to offer a few more comments and to just go into that particular problem in a little more depth. So one of the manifestations of this was grossly unequal facilities. You see on the left a picture of a not a typical public school for Black children. And this was in stark contrast to brick facilities for white children. I also talked in that research about the purposeful oppression of higher education for Black citizens, such as for Black colleges that were set aside for people but not given anywhere near the resources that were given to white colleges. With Century South Carolina, we have a very good record of the unequal nature of public education, particularly through this report, which was created in 1937 and tallyed what the physical facilities were for K through 12 education. So this was a very important source, even though as is revealed in this map, there were equal numbers of Black and white pupils in many of the counties in the state of South Carolina. So you can see that the whole population was just under half a million, but the number of white and those days they were called colored people was about even. And yet there was gross inequality, such as here, the high schools available for the two different races. So the Black dots are the high schools available for Black students, and the clear dots are white dots of those for white students. So the oppression of high school education are actually anything over two or three grades for Black public education was true throughout the state. And again, this is representative of that region. So that was true in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, many other states as well. This is my own school. It was a Rosenwald school, which was brick school, it was a very unusual situation that we did have a brick public school, but in part because that was of the largesse of the Rosenwald Foundation. So one of the things I looked at is how did philanthropy try to rebalance that very disturbing imbalance. So here we have this mid-century situation that is a case study of the ills that Shoveya Fendi talked about. And so how did we try to address that? Well, there are several ways. The biggest way was of course a civil rights movement. And that included, for example, for the problem of separate and unequal public accommodations, warriors for social justice through sit-ins, meal ins, boycotts, tried to force changes in the law that would allow people to sit in at lunch counters or to go to movie theaters or beaches, equally with white people. Another movement for social justice was to create law suits, which filed for school desegregation. And that's what I talk about a lot in my own work. Another was to march and push for laws that enhanced voter rights, and some of these laws were greatly successful to a certain extent. But what about this institutional racism and economic oppression? Did it really resolve these cracks in the social structure? Just not. These were incomplete solutions to the problems that existed in that society and in American society at large. So these court cases, this is one of the first. This was in Clarendon County, which was very close to my hometown in South Carolina. And this is one of the cases that was later submerged into the Brown case. I'm not referring about many wonderful improvements, but in the final analysis, it did not actually elevate black public education to the extent that it needed to be elevated. And so was resisted, and it was resisted sometimes in the form of violence. And so this is the house that was burned down by one of the early vocal proponents, Brevin Delaney, of school desegregation. And more widely what happened was that white citizens formed separate private schools or moved so that they would not have to desegregate. And this was a partial solution, this legal public desegregation of schools. In my hometown, we also carried out quite a few of the boycotts and marches that I mentioned. And again, that did bring about benefits, but they were limited in many ways. And when you consider that, then the ways that Shoveya Fendi was talking about, that we needed to have true reform, make a lot of sense, that we needed the deeper manifestations of reform that he was suggesting. And it may it was even more than reform, it was a whole new way of looking at the need to revolutionize our approach to a social transformation of a system that was, as he said, written by racial prejudice and by heaves and cracks. So these principles, I'm sure, had a great effect on people that that came across them, who were tired of the kinds of injustice that existed at that time. And so we have some research that has begun to document this and I call out these books in particular as books that kind of talk about how did the Baha'i Faith arise, and what was it that really spurred people to come into the Baha'i Faith. This is not my own research, but I would like to just highlight these books, these two of them are by Louis Venters, and then of course, the memoir by Richard Ombacromby give us very uplifting narrative about that period. And again, if we look at what should we be thinking about today. So, again, I think these strategies in the middle of the screen of civil rights initiatives, the neolens boycotts, the lawsuits, the voting rights marches, those have faded. But on the left, we see that there are still some some challenges that remain, and how should we deal with those. So, I think we need to just think about how the revelation of Allah is really situated to help us deal with these particular problems. One is that we have an educated framework that will help lead us to the unification of the globe, and I'm thinking in particular of the Institute process, and of the current plan, which we know is the framework for helping to overcome the stresses and strains that are caused by race or class or nationality, the various divisions that we're experiencing today. Within the Baha'i revelation and ironclad belief in equality and a system for social and economic development and of course this is also related to the Institute process, but also to the key principles that show the affinity elucidated but that the universal house of justice has continued to formulate and of course we have the writings of Allah and after that we can draw upon as well, as well as the example of after we have an enlightened system of governance. So, on the left you remember that one of the problems that existed was the suppression of voting rights. And those problems still exist we now see a resurgence of efforts to repress voting rights by race and by class. Whereas we know that in the Baha'i ethos, we are actually safeguarding the voting rights of minorities and appointing them. If necessary, if any discrimination is allowed it should be to appoint and make sure that there is minority representation so that's a revolutionary concept when you consider racial injustice. And of course all of this is a systematic approach to racial unity, unlike the efforts of the civil rights era that were only partial. So, again, I think these narratives help us to understand a little bit about how the Baha'i community helped us to overcome these stresses and strains, and these books are particularly popular among Baha'is. I'd like to mention also though that the Universal House of Justice has urged us to become more outwardly oriented and to engage in public discourse and so some of us have been writing books that are aimed to the greater community. And my own recent book on South Carolina is to the right. There is an edited book that several of us participated in on the left, the Baha'i faith in African American history, and several of us are involved in another book that is impressed. That's also co-edited by Lonnie Bramston that is aimed at university classrooms. And these three books we are trying to to offer to the public at large, including university classes, to give them some insight into not only the racism that has existed but also how the Baha'i faith has addressed that racism. So, I hope that this has been helpful, and that this perhaps is a start to a conversation. Again, thank you for joining.