# Gregory, Louis George

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Gayle Morrison, Gregory, Louis George, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Gregory, Louis George (1874–1951)
> African American lawyer who became a leading Bahá’í speaker, writer,
> administrator, and proponent of race unity and equality; first person of sub-
> Saharan African descent to be elected to the national governing body of the
> Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada, and first to be appointed a Hand of the
> Cause of God.
> 
> ARTICLE OUTLINE:                                     FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE
> Family and Early Life                          Louis George was born in Charleston, South
> Early Years as a Bahá’í                        Carolina, on 6 June 1874, less than a decade after
> Teacher                                        his parents were freed from slavery. His mother,
> Administrator                                  called Mary Elizabeth and generally known by her
> Proponent of Race Unity                        middle name, was the daughter of Mariah ("wholly
> Tributes                                       of African blood"), 1 a nurse on Elysian Fields
> plantation in Darlington, South Carolina, and the
> ARTICLE RESOURCES:
> white plantation owner, George Washington
> Notes                                          Dargan. A cotton farmer, lawyer, state senator,
> Other Sources and Related Reading              and judge, Dargan died in 1859, at the age of
> fifty-six, leaving an estate that included some 119
> slaves on two plantations. Mariah and Elizabeth were not sold off and separated, as often occurred
> when a planter’s estate was settled; they remained slaves on Elysian Fields until the end of the Civil
> War (1861–65), when they were emancipated.
> 
> During the first, chaotic years of freedom, Mariah’s husband, a
> blacksmith, prospered enough to buy a horse and a mule, but his
> success attracted the anger of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
> One night, Klan members rode up to his house, called him outside, and
> killed him. After debating whether to "Shoot into the house and kill that
> woman too," they decided against it and rode away.2
> 
> Despite the unsettled postwar conditions in Darlington, Elizabeth was
> able to obtain a rudimentary education. While still a teenager, she
> married Ebenezer (E. F.) George. He is described in the 1870 census as
> a blacksmith and a mulatto, and noted as literate, but little else about
> him is known. The census indicates that the couple’s household in
> Darlington included their first son, Theodore Augustus, born in 1869,
> and Elizabeth’s mother, known in postwar records as Mary Bacot. In
> the early 1870s, the family moved from Darlington to Charleston.
> There the couple’s second son, Louis, was born.
> Louis Gregory in his youth. National Bahá’í
> Although the city offered opportunities for work and education, the       Archives, United States.
> 
> George family experienced hard times. Ebenezer fell ill with
> tuberculosis, dying sometime before 1880.3 As an adult, Louis Gregory retained no memories of his
> father, but he recalled the deep poverty into which the family soon plunged.
> 
> Two major influences during Louis’s childhood were his maternal grandmother and his mother. From
> Mary Bacot, Louis learned to face challenges and hardships with courage, dignity, resourcefulness, and
> a sense of humor. Louis recalled that she would tell stories of plantation life that made him helpless
> with laughter. His mother, who worked as a tailor to support her family, conveyed to Louis her refined
> sensibilities and a love of learning.
> 
> The third major figure in Louis’s childhood was George Gregory,
> whom Elizabeth married on 14 July 1881. A freeborn native of
> Charleston from a property-holding family, a Union army
> veteran,4 a carpenter by trade, and a widower, Gregory rescued
> the little family from destitution, raised and educated his two
> stepsons, and gave them his surname. The respite from
> suffering was brief, however. In 1890 Louis’s brother died of
> typhopneumonia, 5 and Elizabeth died of spinal meningitis just a
> year later. Yet George Gregory remained "a real father" to Louis6
> and to stepchildren from a subsequent marriage, creating family
> ties of affection that remained strong even after his death in
> 1929.
> 
> Louis Gregory belonged to the
> first generation of African
> Americans in the South to have
> Mary Elizabeth Gregory, Louis Gregory's mother. a legal right to education. He
> National Bahá’í Archives, United States.
> attended state-run primary
> schools and later studied at private institutions established by white
> missionaries to educate the most promising young African Americans—
> those who came to be known as the "talented tenth," to use the phrase
> coined by W. E. B. DuBois. Gregory received his secondary education at
> Avery Normal Institute, the first high school for African Americans in
> Charleston to provide a college-preparatory curriculum. He graduated in
> June 1891, shortly before his mother’s death, and then attended Fisk
> University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he earned a bachelor’s degree
> in 1896.
> 
> After teaching a few years at Avery, Gregory decided to become a
> lawyer. His choice of career required leaving the South; the region
> offered African Americans no opportunities to study law and, in the
> post-Reconstruction period, virtually no possibility of employment in the
> legal field. In 1899 he enrolled in the School of Law at Howard
> University, an historically black university in Washington DC. One of
> twenty graduates (all male) in 1902, he gave the commencement
> address, entitled "The Growth of Peace Laws," in which he focused on
> George Gregory, Louis Gregory's
> disarmament and international peace initiatives. He was admitted to the          stepfather. National Bahá’í Archives, United
> States.
> bar of the District of Columbia in October 1902 and the bar of the
> United States Supreme Court in March 1907.
> 
> For fifteen years, Gregory practiced law in Washington—for a time in partnership with another young
> Howard graduate, James A. Cobb, who later became Assistant United States Attorney in Washington
> and a judge of the District of Columbia Municipal Court. Both men were considered rising stars in
> Washington’s black community. Beginning in 1904, Gregory worked for a decade as a clerk at the
> United States Treasury Department; he was promoted several times before returning to full-time private
> practice.
> 
> EARLY YEARS AS A BAHÁ’Í
> Disillusioned by the mistreatment of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction period, Gregory felt
> compelled to protest racial segregation and the infringement of civil rights. His ideas, as he later
> described them, were "radical," and he was committed to a "program of fiery agitation."7 Although his
> mother and grandmother had been deeply religious, religion was no longer of any interest to him; he
> "had been seeking," he recalled many years later, "but not finding truth, had given up." 8 He first heard
> about the Bahá’í Faith from a Treasury Department coworker—a white southerner who, although not
> seriously interested in the religion for himself, thought Gregory would be. Gregory had no inclination to
> attend a religious meeting, but finally, late in 1907, he acquiesced to his friend’s prodding. Pauline
> Hannen, also a white southerner, welcomed him to the meeting with unusual warmth, telling him that
> what he was about to hear would make possible "a work . . . that would bless humanity." The talk by
> Lua Getsinger, one of the first Western Bahá’ís, provided a "brief but vivid" historical account of the
> religions of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh.9
> 
> Confounding his own expectations, Gregory was intrigued and
> accepted Pauline Hannen’s invitation to study the religion. She
> and her husband, Joseph, became his teachers and close friends.
> For the next year and a half, he attended meetings in their
> home, impressed by their freedom from racial prejudice,
> attracted by their beliefs, yet held back by his agnosticism.
> Finally, the Hannens pierced his "mental veils" by teaching him
> "how to pray."10
> 
> Gregory became a Bahá’í in June 1909. "It comes to me," he
> Pauline and Joseph Hannen with Pauline's sister Fanny wrote the Hannens a month later, "that I have never taken
> Knobloch (right). National Bahá’í Archives, United    occasion to thank you specifically for all your kindness and
> States.
> patience, which finally culminated in my acceptance of the great
> truths of the Bahai Revelation. It has given me an entirely new conception of Christianity and of all
> religion, and with it my whole nature seems changed for the better. . . . It is a sane and practical
> religion, which meets all the varying needs of life, and I hope I shall ever regard it as a priceless
> possession." 11
> 
> Gregory believed that, in embracing the new faith, he neither set aside his commitment to racial
> equality and social justice nor distanced himself from those working for change. Instead, he refocused
> his undiminished concern for the welfare of his people by placing it within a universal context: the
> establishment of a world order encompassing all peoples, founded on faith in a Supreme Being and an
> ennobling vision of human destiny.
> 
> One of Louis Gregory’s first actions as a Bahá’í was to confront de facto segregation in the Washington
> DC Bahá’í community. Rather than being disaffected by the disparity between the Bahá’ís’ professed
> beliefs and their actions, which largely reflected customary social attitudes and practices, Gregory
> became an agent of change. His mission was reinforced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who wrote in 1909 in reply to
> Gregory’s first letter to Him, "I hope that thou mayest become . . . the means whereby the white and
> colored people shall close their eyes to racial differences and behold the reality of humanity." 12
> Gregory’s dedication to promoting the pivotal principle of the Bahá’í Faith, the oneness of humankind,
> was thus rooted in his life experience and temperament and confirmed by his relationship with ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá.
> 
> In early 1911 Gregory became the first African American Bahá’í to have the privilege of pilgrimage at
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s express invitation. 13 He traveled to Egypt, where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was residing at the time,
> and then visited the Bahá’í holy places in Ottoman Palestine (See: Bahá’í World Center). The pilgrimage
> not only had a profoundly transformative spiritual impact on Gregory but provided opportunities for
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to stress the vital importance of bringing black and white Americans together. "‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá said many wonderful things during my brief contact with him in Egypt, which lasted less than a
> fortnight," Gregory later recalled. "But more than anything else his discourse was about the American
> race problem." 14 When Gregory asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for His guidance, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reiterated the wish
> He had expressed in His first letter to Gregory, urging him to "Work for unity and harmony between
> the races." 15
> 
> The close association between Gregory and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá continued during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to North
> America, 11 April–5 December 1912. Gregory was instrumental in arranging for two major speaking
> engagements for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Washington DC on 23 April: at noon to an audience of more than a
> thousand in Rankin Chapel at Howard University, and that evening to a large gathering of the Bethel
> Literary and Historical Association at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. That same
> day, Ali Kuli Khan, chargé d’affaires of the Persian Legation, and Madame Florence Breed Khan, both
> Bahá’ís, held a luncheon and a reception in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s honor. At the luncheon, to which about
> fifteen socially prominent guests had been invited, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá defied both Washington protocol and
> the conventions of racial segregation by insisting that Gregory join Him and by adding a place for
> Gregory immediately to His right, in the seat of honor. Seven months later, during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
> second visit to Washington, the Bahá’ís organized a banquet at Rauscher’s Hall that was attended by
> some three hundred people. It was the first interracial social event ever held by the Bahá’ís in the
> nation’s capital city.
> 
> In further defiance of convention, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged the
> marriage of Gregory and a white English Bahá’í, Louisa (Louise)
> A. M. Mathew, whose pilgrimage in 1911 had coincided with
> Gregory’s and who had traveled to America with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at
> His invitation. Although ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had raised the topic of
> intermarriage during their visit to Egypt, telling Gregory, "If you
> have any influence to get the races to intermarry, it will be very
> valuable," 16 at first they thought of each other only as friends.
> When they met again in America, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá urged them to
> consider their relationship in a new light. Only then did the
> potential attachment He had sensed between them blossom into
> love. They were married in a quiet ceremony in New York City
> on 27 September 1912, becoming the first interracial Bahá’í
> couple at a time when intermarriage in the United States defied
> popular scientific theories about the baneful effects of "race
> mixing," flouted the customary dictates of a divided society, and
> was a criminal offense in much of the nation. 17
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá described the Gregorys as "an introduction to the
> Louis and Louise Gregory on the occasion of their  accomplishment" of fellowship between the races. 18 Although the
> wedding, September 1912. National Bahá’í Archives, couple had no children of their own, they enriched the lives of
> United States.
> many young people and, over the years, became a particular
> source of strength to a growing number of interracially married couples among the American Bahá’ís.
> 
> TEACHER
> Besides setting an example of courage in his own personal life, Gregory worked in three separate but
> interrelated fields to promote the oneness of humankind. First, he devoted himself to teaching the
> Bahá’í Faith, particularly among African Americans. His efforts in Washington DC immediately attracted
> the interest of a number of professionals and intellectuals. The need to accommodate them spurred the
> Washington Bahá’ís to begin reconsidering practices based on racial prejudice and to commence the
> long, spasmodic process of rooting out those prejudices. Although it would be many years before the
> community overcame overt racial barriers, Louis Gregory’s activities as a new Bahá’í led to the holding
> of some integrated meetings, paving the way for many interracial gatherings during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit.
> 
> On teaching trips to the South in 1910 and 1915, Gregory found African Americans to be "deeply and
> vitally interested" in the Bahá’í message. 19 As a southerner and a graduate of Avery, Fisk, and Howard,
> a recognized member of the African American intelligentsia, and an eloquent speaker, he was welcomed
> as a lecturer at numerous black schools and colleges, churches, and social organizations in the South.
> 
> In 1916, when the North American Bahá’ís received the first five letters of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan ,
> summoning them to disseminate the Bahá’í Faith throughout the continent and the world, Gregory
> responded to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s call to establish the Faith in the southern states. Traveling extensively for
> about six weeks in the fall of 1916, Gregory spoke to an estimated fifteen thousand people. He
> returned to Washington determined to free himself for more travel. With Louise’s full agreement—even
> though she was seldom able to travel with him because of the constraints of a racially divided society—
> he closed his law practice and a real estate firm he had just established and turned down a position on
> the law faculty at Howard University.
> 
> Gregory’s journeys continued for the next thirty years. Although he concentrated primarily on the
> South, he visited forty-six states as well as parts of Canada. Gradually, a pattern evolved: he would
> travel during the winter, sometimes interrupted by weeks or months devoted to administrative and
> organizational activity in the North, and spend summers, if possible, with Louise. At first their home
> base continued to be Washington DC. Later they lived in New England: in greater Boston; Portsmouth,
> New Hampshire; and Eliot, Maine. They especially enjoyed participating in summer classes and
> conferences at Green Acre Bahá’í School in Eliot, where their activities provided a respite from the
> periods of "enforced separation" that Louis’s work entailed.20
> 
> After making the decision to give up his law practice, Louis and Louise Gregory paid for his travels with
> their personal resources, including the proceeds from the sale of the home that served as their refuge
> from discrimination. After their funds were depleted, he accepted financial assistance from friends and,
> for more than a decade, a monthly subsidy from the Bahá’í fund, a necessity with which he was never
> comfortable. The termination of that subsidy in January 1933, during the depths of the Great
> Depression, tested him personally for a time but did not deter him from the work to which he had long
> been completely committed.
> 
> For nearly three decades, from 1917 until 1946, he persevered as an itinerant
> Bahá’í teacher despite meager means and difficult, degrading traveling
> conditions. Particularly in the South, where transport was segregated and
> public accommodations for African Americans were virtually nonexistent, Louis
> Gregory spent countless hours sitting on hot, dirty trains and often, having
> arrived in a new town, seeking a bed for the night.
> 
> Noteworthy among Gregory’s journeys was a 1921 coast-to-coast trip, the
> longest he ever made, described by a Bahá’í administrator at the time as an
> achievement unsurpassed in the history of the North American Bahá’í
> community. In 1933 he participated in one of the first interracial teaching
> trips to the South. In the mid-1930s he responded to a call by Shoghi Effendi
> Louis Gregory speaking. National   for intensive teaching; Gregory stayed in Nashville, Tennessee, until there
> Bahá’í Archives, United States.    were enough Bahá’ís to form its first local administrative body.
> 
> Beginning in 1922, rather than remaining at home while her husband traveled, Louise Gregory began
> spending increasingly lengthy periods of time in Europe, where she supported herself by teaching music,
> English, and Esperanto and helped form Bahá’í communities in a number of countries, including Bulgaria
> and Yugoslavia. Shortly after Louise returned from the Balkans in 1936, the Gregorys responded to a
> new call by Shoghi Effendi to establish the Bahá’í Faith in every country of the Americas. They sailed for
> Haiti in January 1937, planning to spend at least three months, with the intention of returning or
> remaining indefinitely. They were immediately successful in attracting the nucleus of a Bahá’í
> community but then encountered government opposition. In April 1937 they sailed for New York,
> hopeful that the official attitude would change and allow them to return.
> 
> That year marked the beginning of the Seven Year Plan, the first of several plans devised by Shoghi
> Effendi for the expansion of the Bahá’í Faith within the framework of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan. With
> doors in Haiti having shut, Louis Gregory resumed speaking tours throughout the United States but also
> focused on building Bahá’í communities in the six states in the South that had no resident Bahá’ís when
> the plan was devised. During the winter of 1937–38, he spent several months at Tuskegee Institute, an
> historically black institution of higher education in Tuskegee, Alabama. In January 1939 he went to Pine
> Bluff, Arkansas, the location of another historically black college, and remained for a month of intensive
> activity. Over the next several years, even though World War II made traveling difficult, he visited
> numerous college campuses in the South, white and black alike, as well as in border states and the
> Midwest.
> 
> The pace of Gregory’s journeys remained brisk until 1946, when his own brief illness combined with
> Louise’s increasing frailty led him to curtail his travels as well as his administrative work. The couple
> settled into quiet retirement in Eliot, near the Green Acre campus. There they enjoyed gardening and
> the simple domestic pursuits that their life together had seldom allowed.
> 
> ADMINISTRATOR
> Louis Gregory made signal contributions not only to
> teaching the Bahá’í Faith but also to a second field of
> activity: Bahá’í administration. He was first elected in
> February 1911 to fill a vacancy on the Working
> Committee, the embryonic Bahá’í administrative body in
> Washington DC. In 1912, during the national Bahá’í
> convention attended by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Gregory was
> elected to the Executive Board of Bahai Temple Unity,
> the governing body in North America at the time.
> 
> Gregory’s effectiveness as an administrator kept him in
> the forefront of national administrative service for more
> National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States
> and Canada, early 1940s. Seated, l. to r.: Dorothy Baker, Louis
> than three decades. In 1918 he was again elected to the
> Gregory, Leroy Ioas, Amelia Collins. Standing, l. to r.: Siegfried Executive Board of Bahai Temple Unity and in 1922 to
> Schopflocher, Roy Wilhelm, Horace Holley, Allen McDaniel,
> George Latimer.                                                    the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the
> United States and Canada, which superseded the
> Executive Board. One of few African Americans elected to national leadership in any interracial
> organization in the first half of the twentieth century, he served on the National Assembly for fourteen
> years: 1922–24, 1927–32, and 1939–46.21 Several times he received the highest or second highest
> number of votes cast. He filled a number of administrative roles on the Assembly, becoming its first
> recording secretary, an office he held for six years, and helping to draft its bylaws, which became the
> model for the charters of all National Spiritual Assemblies throughout the world. He also devoted energy
> to the work of a national Bahá’í interracial committee, which he served as a member and an officer for
> many years.
> 
> Gregory attended almost every national Bahá’í convention from 1911 until his retirement in 1946. Often
> he was elected convention secretary, served as convention reporter, or addressed the gathering as a
> featured speaker.
> PROPONENT OF RACE UNITY
> In addition to achieving distinction as a Bahá’í teacher and administrator, Louis Gregory served as a
> standard-bearer in a third field: the promotion of race unity. Both ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi
> repeatedly called the attention of the American Bahá’ís to the importance of confronting racial
> prejudice, which Shoghi Effendi described as America’s "most vital and challenging issue."22 Gregory led
> the community’s response. Guided by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s instruction to work for amity and harmony
> between the races, Gregory learned many valuable lessons while tackling challenges in Washington DC.
> Later, encouraged in his work by Shoghi Effendi, Gregory’s activities became national in scope; for
> decades he was the preeminent Bahá’í writer, lecturer, and organizer on this theme.
> 
> In the North, conferences and other activities sponsored or cosponsored by the Bahá’ís resulted in a
> significant public role for the religion in the fields of race relations and civil rights. These events
> provided a platform for the exchange of views by outstanding leaders, white and black. Among them
> were W. E. B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, William Stanley Braithwaite, Franz Boas, James Weldon
> Johnson, Jane Addams, and Roy Wilkins, to name a few who were not Bahá’ís, and distinguished
> Bahá’ís such as Alain Locke, Dorothy Baker, Matthew Bullock, Sarah Martin Pereira, and Horace Holley.
> Gregory frequently served behind the scenes as organizer or publicist and sometimes took a more
> visible role as chairperson or speaker.
> 
> In the South, Gregory often attempted to overcome racial barriers, directly and indirectly. He spoke to
> racially mixed audiences on a number of occasions and at times to white groups, including the student
> bodies of white colleges. He once shared a platform with a grand cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan. Simply
> by associating with white Bahá’ís, especially women, he risked arrest or even lynching; yet he was
> undeterred.
> 
> Once, while visiting Miami, he and two white women from the North arranged for twenty-one Bahá’í
> meetings in a fortnight, attracting people of both races. At the end of his stay, the three took time off
> for a little sightseeing and a picnic on a beach that happened to be in the white section of town.
> Afterward, a friend asked him whether he realized that all the African Americans were praying for him
> because, not being from the area, he obviously failed to realize how dangerous it was to be seen with
> white women. Gregory replied that, having been born and reared in the South, he knew its customs
> well ("about as well as "Brer Rabbit in the briar patch") but found his protection in God: "If He does not
> hold me I am unsafe anywhere." 23
> 
> Under the difficult and dangerous conditions that
> characterized a prejudiced and racially segregated
> society, the American Bahá’í community in its first half
> century struggled to exemplify its stated belief in
> oneness. It experienced spurts of systematic progress,
> aroused by stirring calls to action from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and
> Shoghi Effendi, followed by periods of retrenchment and
> apathy. Throughout, Gregory led the way, demonstrating
> forbearance, dignity, and unshakable faith and vision.
> 
> In 1932, for example, as secretary of the National Bahá’í
> Conference for interracial amity cosponsored by the Bahá’ís and
> Committee for Racial Amity, Gregory responded to a
> the Urban League, New York City, 8 Nov. 1930 (Louis Gregory,
> Local Spiritual Assembly that had instructed one of the
> standing, third row, center right). National Bahá’í Archives,
> United States.
> members of its community to channel her enthusiasm for
> promoting racial amity into holding a study class "for colored people" in her home. He cautioned the
> Assembly to reconsider an action that would be "fore-doomed to failure," bringing it "under fire" from
> both blacks and liberal whites, who would perceive it as segregation. 24 Yet he declined to make racial
> attitudes a litmus test of faith. "My observation," he wrote an African American Bahá’í friend in 1950, "is
> that many whites are unconscious of their prejudices and many colored people reflect, consciously or
> otherwise, the prejudices of the whites."25 He believed that overcoming prejudice requires effort,
> patience, and acknowledgment of the sincerity of others, even if "their views may clash with ours," but
> that the Bahá’í Faith "if adhered to will inevitably train people out of their prejudices and insularities of
> thought."26
> 
> TRIBUTES
> Louis Gregory holds, in the words of Shoghi Effendi, a "unique
> position" in North American Bahá’í history. 27 Gregory’s lifetime of
> effort cannot be considered separately from his attainment of
> extraordinary personal attributes. From his youth, Gregory was
> bright, multitalented, and idealistic, gifted with eloquence and a
> sense of humor. After becoming a Bahá’í at the age of thirty-five,
> he began working consciously toward personal spiritual
> transformation and the achievement of deep faith, patience, and
> humility.
> 
> A milestone in Gregory’s spiritual journey was his pilgrimage in
> 1911. "Verily, he has much advanced in this journey," ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá observed. "He received another life, and obtained another
> power. When he returned, Gregory was, quite another Gregory.
> He had become a new creation." 28 In 1920 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá paid him
> this tribute: "That pure soul has a heart like unto transparent
> water. He is like unto pure gold. This is why he is acceptable in
> any market and is current in every country." 29
> Louis G. Gregory. National Bahá’í Archives, United
> States.
> At a time when few Americans could see beyond color, many of
> Louis Gregory's white contemporaries recognized him as a spiritual giant and a beacon of true humanity
> —a source of "shimmering radiance," one recalled, "that was so remarkable, that seemed to be part of
> him." 30 A Bahá’í with whom Gregory traveled as part of an interracial team in the South recalled, "I
> never saw him show anger, impatience or resentment"; instead, when met by hostility, Gregory seemed
> to search "his innermost being and beyond for a solution to a change in the relationship."31 Martha
> Root, the outstanding international Bahá’í teacher in the Faith’s first century, observed, "I always feel
> he is one of the greatest disciples of this new day." 32
> 
> Shoghi Effendi’s letters to Louis Gregory often touch on the theme of Gregory’s spiritual distinction. In
> 1933, at only the midpoint of Gregory’s long years of service, Shoghi Effendi observed:
> 
> I feel impelled to . . . reaffirm my deep sense of indebtedness to you for your
> magnificent work in the service of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. No words of mine can pay
> adequate tribute to the spirit that glows within your breast or to the determination
> that fires your soul in your unique & highly meritorious endeavors. . . . You have
> attained spiritual heights that few indeed can claim to have scaled. You have
> displayed a spirit that few, if any, can equal. 33
> 
> The news conveyed in Gregory’s letters was, in Shoghi Effendi’s words, a source of "inspiration" and
> "comfort." 34 "I am always relieved by your letters from the burden of care & responsibility which often
> oppresses me," Shoghi Effendi stated in a letter dated 29 January 1930.35 And again: "You hardly
> realize what a help you are to me in my arduous work." 36
> 
> Alert and active until the end of his life, although for the last five years he no longer traveled
> extensively, Gregory died suddenly at home on 30 July 1951. He was buried in Eliot.
> Shoghi Effendi conferred on Gregory posthumously the rank of Hand of the Cause of God of God,
> making him the eighth person and the fourth Westerner (following John Esslemont, Keith Ransom-
> Kehler, and Martha Root) to be so named in the period 1925–52. "Profoundly deplore grievous loss of
> dearly beloved, noble-minded, golden-hearted Louis Gregory," Shoghi Effendi cabled the Bahá’ís of the
> United States. "Keenly feel loss of one so loved, admired and trusted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Deserves rank of
> first Hand of the Cause of his race." 37
> 
> In the United States and around the world, Louis Gregory has been recognized for his singular
> achievements. His old friend and former law partner, Judge James Cobb, paid tribute to him as "one of
> those who enriched the life of America."38 Bahá’ís have named institutions and activities in his honor—
> among them, several schools in Africa; the Louis G. Gregory Bahá’í Institute in Hemingway, South
> Carolina (1972); radio station WLGI, also in Hemingway (1985); and the Louis Gregory Cottage
> (formerly the Arts and Crafts Building) at Green Acre. In February 2003 his boyhood home at 2
> Desportes Court in Charleston was dedicated as the first museum in the city to honor a particular
> individual and the first Bahá’í-owned museum in the United States.
> 
> Author: Gayle Morrison
> 
> © 2009 National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Terms of Use.
> 
> .
> 
> Notes:
> 1. Louis G. Gregory, "Racial Unity," chap. 3: "Why Love the South," ts., Louis G. Gregory Papers, National
> Bahá’í Archives, United States, Wilmette, IL [hereafter NBAUS], n. pag.
> 2. Louis Gregory recounts the story, heard from his grandmother when he was a child, in "Racial Unity,"
> chap. 15: "Ku Klux Klan: Then and Now." He states that his grandmother "lived with her husband in a small
> city of the South"--presumably, Darlington, as Charleston was one of the largest cities in the region and,
> indeed, among the thirty most populous in the United States during the years after the Civil War. Louis
> Gregory does not indicate when the couple married or provide the name of his grandmother’s husband, and
> the man’s identity has not yet been discovered in public records.
> 3. No death record for Ebenezer George has been located. Elizabeth George was listed as a widow in the
> 1880 census; she, her two sons, and her mother were among eighteen African Americans (nine adults and
> nine children) living at 3 Burns Lane (also known as Blackbird Alley) in Charleston.
> 4. On discharge in 1866, George Gregory was First Sergeant in Company C, 104th Regiment, United States
> Colored Infantry. Later in life he was known as "Colonel," an honorary title unrelated to his military service.
> 5. The term typhopneumonia was used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to describe a form
> of typhoid that particularly affected the lungs or an unusually severe case of pneumonia.
> 6. Gregory, "Racial Unity," chap. 3: "Why Love the South."
> 7. Gregory, "Racial Unity," chap. 18: "Reminiscent."
> 8. Louis G. Gregory, "Some Recollections of the Early Days of the Bahá’í Faith in Washington, D.C.," ts.,
> Louis G. Gregory Papers, 1.
> 9. Gregory, "Some Recollections," 2.
> 10. Gregory, "Some Recollections," 3.
> 11. Louis Gregory, letter to Joseph and Pauline Hannen, 23 July 1909, Hannen-Knobloch Family Papers,
> NBAUS.
> 12. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablet to Louis Gregory, trans. 17 Nov. 1909, Translations of Original Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá Collection, NBAUS.
> 13. The first African American pilgrim was Robert Turner, Phoebe Hearst’s butler, who traveled with her in
> 1898–99 on the first pilgrimage by Western Bahá’ís, which she organized.
> 14. Gregory, "Racial Unity," chap. 18: "Reminiscent."
> 15. Louis G. Gregory, A Heavenly Vista: The Pilgrimage of Louis G. Gregory (Washington: n.p., n.d.) 10.
> [Reprinted as A Heavenly Vista, 1997 ed. (Fernale, MI, USA: Alpha, 1997) and available online at
> http://bahai-library.com/pilgrims/louis.html  (accessed 23 Jan. 2009)].
> 16. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá quoted in Gregory, A Heavenly Vista, 15.
> 17. When the Gregorys married, antimiscegenation laws existed in well over half of the forty-eight states;
> such laws persisted in sixteen states until 1967, when they were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
> Court. For an overview on attitudes about race, see Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of An Idea in
> America, new ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 1997). For information on intermarriage and "miscegenation" in
> the United States, see Werner Sollors, ed., Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History,
> Literature, and Law (New York: Oxford UP, 2000).
> 18. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablet to Louis and Louise Gregory, trans. 14 Mar. 1914, Translations of Tablets of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Collection.
> 19. "News Notes," Bahai News 7 Feb. 1911: 9.
> 20. Louis Gregory, letter to Edith May Chapman, 27 Sept. 1933, Edith May Chapman Papers, NBAUS.
> 21. Louis Gregory was the first and only nonwhite member of Bahai Temple Unity and, until his retirement
> in 1946, of the National Spiritual Assembly. Since that time, the National Spiritual Assembly of the United
> States has had at least one African American member, and often two or three, in all but two years, 1956–
> 58; the percentage of African Americans on the body has thus been higher than the percentage in the
> Bahá’í community or the general population. Other minorities (American Indian, Korean American) have
> been represented as well. Although in the Bahá’í system individuals are not elected to represent any
> specific demographic, voters bear in mind the desirability of their institutions’ representing the diversity
> that exists within the community.
> 22. Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, 1st pocket-size ed. (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing
> Trust, 1990, 2006 printing) 51: 50.
> 23. Gregory, "Racial Unity," chap. 16: "Perils of Peace Promotion."
> 24. Louis Gregory, letter to Detroit Spiritual Assembly, 14 Dec. 1932, Office of the Secretary Records,
> Correspondence with Individuals Files, NBAUS.
> 25. Louis Gregory, letter to Edith May Chapman, 16 July 1950, Chapman Papers.
> 26. Louis Gregory, letter to Edith May Chapman, 13 May 1950, Chapman Papers.
> 27. Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith: Messages to America 1947–1957 (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing
> Trust, 1965, 1999 printing) 163.
> 28. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablet to Margaret Döring, trans. 15 Aug. 1911, Translations of Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> Collection.
> 29. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablet to Anna Reinke, 16 Oct. 1920, Translations of Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Collection.
> 30. Elaine Snider Eilers, "Recollections of Hand of the Cause Mr. Louis Gregory," ts., part II, attachment to
> Margaret Kunz Ruhe, letter to Gayle Morrison, 28 July 1979.
> 31. Charles Wragg, letter to World Order Editorial Board, Betty J. Fisher, assoc. ed., 9 Mar. 1973, File
> "Morrison–Louis Gregory correspondence," To Move the World Editorial Correspondence, Bahá’í Publishing
> Trust, Wilmette, IL, USA.
> 32. Martha Root, letter to Louise Gregory, 21 Aug. 1926, Louise M. Gregory Papers, NBAUS.
> 33. Shoghi Effendi, letter to Louis Gregory, 24 Oct. 1933, Shoghi Effendi Original Letters and Cables
> Collection, NBAUS.
> 34. Shoghi Effendi, letter to Louis Gregory, 1 Dec. 1931, Shoghi Effendi Letters Collection.
> 35. Shoghi Effendi, letter to Louis Gregory, 29 Jan. 1930, Shoghi Effendi Letters Collection.
> 36. Shoghi Effendi, letter to Louis Gregory, 31 Oct. 1928, Shoghi Effendi Letters Collection.
> 37. Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith 163.
> 38. James A. Cobb quoted in Harlan F. Ober, "Louis G. Gregory," The Bahá’í World, vol. 12: 1950–54
> (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956) 667.
> 
> Understanding the Citations
> Citing Bahá’í Encyclopedia Project Articles
> 
> Other Sources and Related Reading
> For biographical information, see Gayle Morrison, To Move the World: Louis G. Gregory and the
> Advancement of Racial Unity in America (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982, 1999 printing);
> Louis Gregory’s obituary by Harlan Ober in The Bahá’í World, vol. 12: 1950–54, 666–70, and of Louise
> Gregory by Joy Earl Hill in The Bahá’í World, vol. 13: 1954–63 (Haifa: The Universal House of Justice,
> 1970) 876–78. See also Elsie Austin, Above All Barriers: the Story of Louis G. Gregory (Wilmette, IL, USA:
> Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1976); Moojan Momen, "Gregory, Louis," Holy People of the World: A Cross-
> Cultural Encyclopedia, ed. Phyllis Jestice, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA, USA: ABC–CLIO, 2004) 323; "Gregory,
> Louis George," Encyclopedia of African American Religions (New York: Garland, 1993) 313; Angelita D.
> Reyes, "Gregory, Louis George (6 June 1874–30 July 1951)," The African American National Biography, ed.
> Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham, vol. 3 (New York: Oxford UP, 2008) 634–35.
> The following collections at the National Bahá’í Archives, United States, contain records cited in this article
> and other relevant material: Translations of Original Tablets from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Collection; Shoghi Effendi
> Original Letters and Cables Collection; Louis G. Gregory Papers, among which may be found Louis and
> Louise Gregory, "A Teaching Campaign in Haiti," as well as other typescripts cited; and the Louise M.
> Gregory Papers. Correspondence from Louis or Louise Gregory and other items may be found in over fifty
> collections, including the Edith May Chapman Papers; Hannen-Knobloch Family Papers; Alfred E. Lunt
> Papers (also National Teaching Committee’s Teaching Bulletin, 1921–22); Office of the Secretary Records,
> Correspondence with Individuals Files; and Agnes Parsons Papers.
> Archival sources on which this article is based include information compiled by Kathy Lee and Roy Jones and
> by the Bahá’í Encyclopedia Project editorial staff.
> Reports of Gregory’s activities are found in the Bahá’í periodicals of the time—Star of the West, Baha’i
> News Letter, Bahá’í News—and in the The Bahá’í World.
> Published works by Gregory include: "Bahá’í to Jew," World Order os 8 (1942): 119–22; "Centennial
> Celebration of the Birth of Baha’o’llah," Star of the West 8 (1917): 191, 196–203; "Dr. Carver’s Tribute,"
> World Order os 9 (1943): 202–05; "The Equality of Men and Women: Resume of Address by Mr. Louis G.
> Gregory at Boston," Star of the West 8 (1917): 120; "Faith and the Man: The Remarkable Story of
> Henderson Business College, a Bahá’í Enterprise," The Bahá’í World, vol. 8: 1938–40 (Wilmette, IL, USA:
> Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1942) 901–03; "Impressions of Abdul-Baha While at Ramleh," Star of the
> West 2.10 (1911): 5–6; "Light on Basic Unity: Green Acre and the Bahá’í Ideal of International Amity," The
> Bahá’í World, vol. 4: 1930–32 (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1933) 486–89; "The Power of the
> Holy Spirit," Star of the West 10 (1919): 84–87, 90–91; "Robert Turner," World Order os 12 (1946): 28–
> 29; "The Teaching Campaign—News from the South: 'Fifteen Thousand Were Reached Directly,'" Star of the
> West 7 (1917): 170.
> Articles by Louis Gregory on race include: "Racial Amity," Bahá’í Year Book [The Bahá’í World], vol. 1:
> 1925–26 (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1926) 165–69; "Inter-racial Amity," The Bahá’í World,
> vol. 2: 1926–28 (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1928) 281–85; "Racial Amity at Green Acre," The
> Bahá’í World, vol. 3: 1928–30 (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1930) 179–83; "Racial Likenesses
> and Differences: The Scientific Evidence and the Bahá’í Teachings," The Bahá’í World, vol. 6: 1934–36
> (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1937) 659–64; "Racial Amity in America: An Historical Review,"
> The Bahá’í World, vol. 7: 1936–38 (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1939) 652–66; "Accelerated
> Progress in Race Relations," The Bahá’í World, vol. 9: 1940–44 (Wilmette, IL, USA: Bahá’í Publishing Trust,
> 1945) 876–80; "A Gift to Race Enlightenment" [review of W. E. B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction], World
> Order os 2 (1936): 36–39.
> Understanding the Citations
> Citing Bahá’í Encyclopedia Project Articles
>
> — *Gregory, Louis George (Used by permission of the curator)*