The Amazing Nashville Baha'i Community in the 1960s

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