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Louis Gregory – Service to the Oneness of Humanity
Slavery was not a tale read from dusty history books for Louis Gregory. It was a close family memory. Louis Gregory was born in 1874. Both Louis’ parents had been freed from slavery by the civil war. His grandmother on his mother’s side, was an African transported to America as a slave in the Atlantic slave trade, and his grandfather was her white master. When Louis was four his father died. At age 7, Louis Gregory witnessed the murder of his African American grandfather by the Ku Klux Klan, because of his grandfather’s success as a blacksmith. At age 17 Louis lost his mother, who died in child birth. From these difficult beginnings, his life began…
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We are One – Overcoming Racism: Part 2
As introduced in yesterday’s article, racism is entirely incompatible with Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings. Close your eyes to racial differences, and welcome all with the light of oneness.[1] As Westerners began to join the Baha’i Faith early in the 1900s, it was clear that racism would need to be addressed, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’u’lláh’s eldest son, set out to do so. Indeed ‘Abdu’l-Bahá began this work from the earliest visits of Western pilgrims who came to see him in the early 1900s to learn about Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings. In 1911 he invited Louis Gregory, an African American lawyer, to visit him. The pilgrimage not only had a profoundly transformative spiritual impact on Gregory but provided opportunities for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to stress…
