Bahai Community Building Spiritual reparations Barbara Talley: The Bible said the last shall be the first, and the meek shall inherit the Earth. This is it.
Bahai Religion Some people pretend to be asleep Barbara Talley: Maybe we weren’t brought here. Maybe we were sent here.
Racial Unity Love and hate: a poem Barbara Talley: On my way to heaven we stopped, and took a detour through hell.
Racial Unity Learning about how it feels My mother took me to a black Baptist church and told me to go to Sunday school.
Bahai Community Building Love and Faith Community Cafe A white woman complained to me about the African-American kids we’d invited to have free ice cream.
Bahai Community Building Sincere friendships and boots on the ground We must have sincere friendships if we want to include everyone in our community.
Bahai Community Finding a new religion through white Baha’is Anthony Vance: My father was impressed by how he was treated by white Baha’is.
Bahai Religion The pupil of the eye Anthony Vance: The Baha’i writings say that black people are “like the pupil of the eye” through which the light of the spirit shines.
Bahai Community Embracing diversity to overcome residential segregation Anthony Vance: 7 out of 10 white Americans have no close black friends, and 4 out of 10 African-Americans have no close white friends.
Bahai Community Ye shall know them by their fruits Michael Penn: I started to cry, but I wasn’t sure why I was crying.
Bahai Community A spiritual assembly Michael Penn: I was moved by the sweetness, the humility, the frankness and the love that they had for me.
Bahai Community Building Believing in race unity demands work Today’s world influences our thinking in terms of race and class – even if we already believe in unity in diversity.
Bahai Community Standing up for the wellbeing of all Baha’is are supposed to be champions of justice – to stand up for humanitarian issues.
Bahai Community Building Meaningful conversations that address racism Baha’i activities in gentrifying Brooklyn help us to build friendships with people from different backgrounds.
Racial Unity Finding and eliminating prejudices I had no idea of the reality of what it meant to be black in the United States of America.
Bahai Community Learning to pray from African-Americans The Harlem Baha’i teaching institute didn’t do anything until they had properly prayed up the room.
Racial Identity Putting African-Americans in the center We had a race unity workshop where white people surrounded African-Americans and listened to their truth.
Racial Unity Just undo it We got a grant from the Mayor’s Stop the Violence fund to run race unity discussions.
Bahai Community A new Harlem generation I was horrified that so many Baha’is in Harlem were white – but then I saw they were reaching out to their neighborhoods of color.
Bahai Community Reforming education in 1960s Harlem Hussein Ahdieh: Harlem Prep was the most rewarding and colorful period in our lives.
Bahai Community Black, white, Persian and everything else Tavoria Kellam: The Baha’i community was very diverse – it was miles ahead of anything I’d been exposed to.
Racism in America Signing up to fix racism Tavoria Kellam: Racism is a toxin in the air, it’s in the water, we all grew up with it.
Segregation in America How race and class intersect Tavoria Kellam: Our Baha’i Center is in a neighborhood of a certain class, it doesn’t always attract people from uptown.
Racial Identity Debunking color-blindness Tavoria Kellam: In the real world, the most salient thing about me is that I am black.
Bahai Religion History Mr Gregory’s legacy My grandmother was a mother of her church – and she was very happy for me to investigate the Baha’i faith.
