The Amazing Nashville Bahá'í Community in the 1960s
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2   The Journal of Bahá'í Studies 29.4 2019

Dr. Magdalene M. Carney

From the Editor's                          laureate of the United States). There
were Casey and Alice Walton, Georgia
Desk                                       Miller, Winston Evans, and Mary Wat-
kins, editor at the Methodist Publishing
House. All of their amazing stories are
JOHN S. HATCHER                            much too lengthy and noteworthy to
detail here.
T    A          N          B      '          At the time, I was merely a soph-
C                    1960            omore at Vanderbilt, having studied
the Faith intensely for two years, a bit
I declared myself a Bahá'í on the 31st     nervous, but also keen to respond to
of December 1959 while I was home          the queries that—in my mind—would
in Atlanta on spring break from Van-       enable the Local Spiritual Assembly to
derbilt University. Weeks later, I found   determine if I was sufficiently worthy
myself one night standing before the       and informed to become a member of
impressive array of individuals who        the community led by this stellar group
constituted the Local Spiritual Assem-     of notables—educators, editors, poets,
bly of Nashville, Tennessee. There was     musicians, mathematicians.
my brother—William S. Hatcher, five            Suffice it to say that I "passed," was
years my senior—who had responded          joyfully accepted into their midst, and
to everything I could think to ask about   spent the next three years getting to
the Bahá'í Faith and who had declared      know and love them, and, most im-
in June 1957. I had come up for his        portant of all, establishing in my heart
graduation and met some of the inter-      and mind what a Bahá'í community
esting people who would later become       should be, how it should feel, and how
an important part of my life. Bill, of     it should conduct its affairs.
course, later went on to write books           That foundation has stood me in
on the Faith and serve on the National     good stead for sixty years, and I hap-
Spiritual Assemblies of Switzerland,       pily utilize this opportunity as editor
Canada, and Russia.                        of the Journal of Bahá'í Studies to
There was Dr. Sarah Pereira (later a    present brief life sketches of two in-
member of the National Spiritual As-       dividuals from that community in our
sembly of the United States and then       continuing attempt to celebrate those
an Auxiliary Board member); Erma           African-American Bahá'ís whose
Hayden, a concert pianist later to serve   lives, works, and reputations represent
on the National Teaching Commit-           some of the fruitful results stemming
tee of the United States; and her hus-     from the longtime emphasis on racial
band, Robert Hayden, a professor and       equality in the American Bahá'í com-
poet (later to become a member of the      munity, a legacy begun most prom-
University of Michigan faculty and         inently by Hand of the Cause of God
the first African American to be poet      Louis Gregory, and carried on to this
4                    The Journal of Bahá'í Studies 29.4 2019

day by a multitude of dedicated souls       and steadfast devotion to his beliefs
who have rendered such amazing ser-         as a Bahá'í. Among his most widely
vice to the Bahá'í Faith and to society     acclaimed poems alluding to the his-
at large.                                   torical plight of African Americans are
In this issue, we will briefly re-       "Middle Passage"—a poetic rendering
count the life stories of Dr. Robert        of the Amistad affair—his paean son-
Hayden—who, as I mentioned, was a           net "Frederick Douglass," and "Run-
member of the Local Assembly when I         agate Runagate," a tribute to Harriet
declared my faith in Bahá'u'lláh—and        Tubman. Likewise, his poems "The
Dr. Magdalene Carney, who joined that       Prophet," "Bahá'u'lláh in the Garden
same community in 1962, having been         of Ridván," and "The Dawnbreaker"
taught the Faith by Sarah Pereira, then     are possibly the best poems about the
Professor of Romance Languages at           Faith that have yet been penned.
Tennessee State University.                    Raised in the Detroit ghetto (iron-
ically known as "Paradise Valley"),
D .R         E. H         (1913–1980)       Hayden was from his youth entranced
by language, poetry, and the concepts
It is with no small amount of irony that    of justice, freedom, and identity. After
we might characterize Hayden as ei-         working with other major writers as
ther "Bahá'í poet" or "African-Amer-        part of the Federal Writers' Project in
ican poet"—indeed, as the first Af-         1938, he married concert pianist and
rican-American poet laureate of the         composer Erma Inez Morris in 1940,
United States—before we first classify      and the next year he enrolled at the
him simply as a poet, since he disliked     University of Michigan, where he stud-
the idea of being a "hyphenated" poet.      ied under heralded English poet W. H.
He received no small amount of crit-        Auden.
icism for not allowing himself to be           It was during this time that both Rob-
classified by some narrower identity.       ert and Erma became acquainted with
"I object to strict definitions of what a   the Bahá'í Faith, becoming members
poet is or should be," he maintained.       prior to moving in 1946 to Nashville,
"We're living in a time when individ-       where Hayden taught English literature
uality is threatened by a kind of mech-     at Fisk University. As part of the grow-
anizing anonymity, and by regimen-          ing Nashville Bahá'í community, both
tation" (quoted in Hatcher, From the        Robert and Erma were active in Bahá'í
Auroral Darkness 74).                       activities. Hayden concentrated on his
The fact is, however, that by the end   heavy teaching load and on writing
of his all-too-brief life, he had become    poetry whenever he could, and Erma
celebrated by both the African Ameri-       assumed the position of supervisor of
can community and by the Bahá'í com-        music for Nashville public schools.
munity for his outstanding capacity as         Rejecting the tension imposed on
an artist, unrelenting courage as a man,    him by the rising pressure among
From the Editor's Desk                              5

African-American writers and artists       cancer. In February of 1980 he died,
to focus his poetic gifts on becoming      but not before the department of Af-
politically active, Hayden was widely      rican-American Studies at the Uni-
criticized for rejecting what he consid-   versity of Michigan paid tribute to the
ered the constricting label of "Black      contribution he had made to the field,
poet." But around this same time, in       an honor he treasured above all others
1966, he achieved global acclaim by        because it helped vindicate the difficult
winning the Grand Prize for Poetry at      stand he had taken in the 1960s and af-
the first World Festival of Negro Arts     terward by refusing to make his poems
held in Dakar, Senegal, for his collec-    polemical or to cater to the demands
tion of verse Ballad of Remembrance.       of what he called "the minotaurs of
From this point forward, his career    edict,"1 the "monsters of abstraction"
ascended. He published a succession        that "police and threaten us."2
of well-received volumes of verse, and        There is much more one could say
in 1967 he recorded his poems for the      about his life and his art, something
Library of Congress and was appointed      that a number of fine scholars are
poetry editor of the Bahá'í magazine       currently undertaking. My own work
World Order. That summer, he was           From the Auroral Darkness (George
appointed poet-in-residence at Indiana     Ronald 1984) has recently been suc-
State University, and in 1968, visiting    ceeded by Derik Smith, Associate Pro-
professor of English at the University     fessor of English at Claremont McK-
of Michigan. In 1969, he served as the     enna College, who in 2018 published
Bigham Professor at the University of      Robert Hayden in Verse with the pres-
Louisville, and that summer as visiting    tigious University of Michigan Press, a
poet at the University of Washington.      highly praised book that won the 2019
In 1975, Hayden received the Academy       College Language Association Book
of American Poets Fellowship, and he       Award.
topped off the decade by being offered          Hayden's poetry continues to be
a professorship at the University of       studied and anthologized, especially
Michigan, shortly after which he was       in college texts. For example, "Those
first offered the position of poet laure-   Winter Sundays," his touching and
ate, a position he accepted in 1977 and    memorable tribute to the love his foster
for which he was reappointed in 1978.      father bestowed on him, is one of the
In the meantime, he was also awarded       most anthologized poems of the twen-
honorary doctorates at Brown Univer-       tieth century.
sity in 1976 and at Fisk in 1978.
It was during the last year of his
1     From Hayden's "Ballad of Re-
tenure as poet laureate in Washington,
membrance" in A Ballad of Remembrance.
D.C., that Hayden began to feel ill.         2     From Hayden's "In the Mourning
Upon his return to Ann Arbor, Michi-       Time" in Words in the Mourning Time.
gan, he discovered he had contracted
6                    The Journal of Bahá'í Studies 29.4 2019

Finally, as I note in my own study of    her, one would always be on the right
his life and art, his wife Erma was seen    track, whatever the task at hand. In
by the Bahá'í community as intimately       short, she was her own person, sure of
involved in the Faith on the local and      herself, but never prideful or remote or
national level, while Hayden seemed         disdainful of anyone who came to her
isolated, laboring at home in his austere   for assistance.
profession as poet. And yet, as I also          The eldest of eight children, "Mag"
point out, he has doubtless attracted       (as she liked to be called) grew up on a
more people to study the Bahá'í Faith       farm where she labored and where she
than he would have had he dedicated         was expected by her parents to set an
his days to the usual activities meant      example for her brothers and sisters.
to teach the Faith, rather than laboring    And early on she knew that the most
away at searching out precisely the         important manner in which she could
best, the most exact words to fashion       excel at this task, help her parents
the verses he left behind.                  emerge from dire poverty, and possibly
pursue other objectives they had in-
D .M               M. C                     stilled in her, was to pursue education
(1929–1991)                                 as far as it would take her.
Because she was descended from
Like Robert Hayden, Magdalene Car-          slaves who had no such opportuni-
ney rose from a most unlikely beginning     ty, she viewed education not only as
to bloom like a sunflower emerging tall     a means by which she could make a
and bright in an untended field. I met      difference, but as a mandate whereby
her when she first became a Bahá'í, in      she could serve her family and—as her
the Nashville community in 1962, after      life proceeded apace—humankind as a
having been introduced to the Faith by      whole, focusing particularly on disen-
Dr. Sarah Pereira. Upon being given a       franchised African American women.
pamphlet about the Bahá'í teachings,            So it was that she excelled in her
she knew immediately she had discov-        studies, graduating magna cum laude
ered the path by which she could chan-      from Tennessee State University in
nel her plentiful talents and achieve her   Nashville, then receiving her MA de-
lifelong objectives as an educator and a    gree from the highly regarded George
dedicated servant to humankind.             Peabody College in Nashville, major-
My immediate impression of her—          ing in English and Education.
shared by so many who met her—was               She remained in Nashville for the
that this was one of the most authentic     next fifteen years (1967–1982), teach-
human beings I would ever encounter.        ing in the public schools and supervis-
She was a loving person, a light in the     ing student teachers. And it was during
darkness, neither shy nor restrained.       this era of the Civil Rights Movement
One sensed that she knew exactly what       that Mag was awarded a Ford Foun-
she was doing and that by emulating         dation Fellowship in Educational
From the Editor's Desk                               7

Leadership for her work leading and        desire to excel in every aspect of their
organizing a nonviolent desegregation      lives, encouraging the spiritual, moral,
of the public school system in Canton,     social, and intellectual development of
Mississippi. Using the funds she re-       growing Bahá'í communities. She par-
ceived from this award, she went to the    ticipated in the United Nations World
University of Massachusetts, where         Conference on Women in Kenya in
she earned her doctorate in education.     1985 and gave a keynote speech for the
Firm in a conviction she already had,   European Bahá'í Women's Conference
but that was confirmed and enhanced        in the Netherlands in 1989, two years
by her study of the Bahá'í Writings,       before her passing.
Carney believed that racial prejudice,        As one of the many tributes to her
indeed prejudice of any kind, was an       spirit and legacy, the National Spiritual
emotional commitment to a false un-        Assembly of the United States estab-
derstanding of reality. Consequently,      lished the Magdalene Carney Bahá'í
she taught that preventing or treating     Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida,
prejudice could only be accomplished       which today is utilized as a teaching
by first gaining access to both the        center for courses on the Bahá'í Faith
minds and hearts of others and then        and as a training center.
re-educating both.                            My most lasting personal memory
Because the motive force and bul-       of Mag will always be a conversation
wark in all these accomplishments was      I had with her at a Bahá'í summer
her in-depth understanding of and un-      school in Florida. I had for a long while
stinting devotion to the Bahá'í Faith,     stewed over a dilemma resulting from
she was a stalwart and effective Bahá'í     a major decision I had to make regard-
teacher. Her charisma and the mag-         ing my life and career. I presented her
netism of her remarkable smile and         as honestly as I knew how the pros and
even more remarkable character were        cons of the two options I had, as well
irresistible.                              as the consternation and turmoil that
In 1970, she was elected to the         having to make a decision was causing
National Spiritual Assembly of the         me. Her response was as helpful as it
Bahá'ís of the United States, and she      was timely and terse: "Just choose one
was re-elected successively for the        and do it!" she said firmly. It was ex-
following thirteen years, until she was    actly what I needed to hear.
appointed to serve at the Bahá'í World
Centre in Haifa, Israel, as a Counsellor
with the International Teaching Centre.
From this time on, until her death in
Haifa in 1991, she traveled to Africa,
Europe, and various island nations
where she imbued the members of ev-
ery community she touched with the
10   The Journal of Bahá'í Studies 29.4 2019

Dr. Robert E. Hayden
-- The Amazing Nashville Bahá'í Community in the 1960s (Used by permission of the curator)