American Bahá'í
Louis George Gregory (June 6, 1874 – July 30, 1951) was a prominent American member of the Baháʼí Faith who was devoted to its expansion in the United States and elsewhere. He traveled especially in the South to spread his religion as well as advocating for racial unity.
In 1922, he was the first African American elected to the nine-member National Spiritual Assembly of the United States and Canada. He was repeatedly re-elected to that position, leading a generation and more of followers. He also worked to prosyletize the faith to Central and South America.
Gregory was among the elite group of educated African American leaders whom W. E. Du Bois referred to as "the talented tenth."
Gregory was posthumously appointed by Shoghi Effendi in 1951 as a Hand of the Cause, the highest appointed rank in the Baháʼí Faith.
Early years.
Early life.
Louis George was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 6, 1874, the second son of Ebenezer F. and George. Both of his parents were formerly enslaved African Americans who were emancipated during the Civil War.
His mother Mary Elizabeth was the daughter of Mary Bacot, an enslaved African, and her white enslaver George Washington Dargan of the Rough Fork plantation in Darlington, South Carolina. Bacot was "wholly of African blood," and her spiritual teachings inspired Gregory. Bacot married a blacksmith who became a grandfather figure to Gregory.
In 1878, when Louis was four years old, his father Ebenezer died.
He was raised by his stepfather, Colonel George Gregory, who had fought for the Union army.
Circa 1881, when Gregory was 7 years old, he witnessed the lynching of his grandfather by "a hate-inspired mob of white men," possibly Ku Klux Klan members jealous of his financial success as a blacksmith. Biographer Elsie Austin claimed the "bitterness and distortion which might have developed from this experience were deflected by the prayers and teaching of his grandmother, whose life was miraculously spared by the mob."
In 1881, Louis's mother remarried to George Gregory, who was the only freeman of African descent to join the Union Army from the 3000 in Charleston at the time. George Gregory rose to 1st Sgt. in the 104th United States Colored Troops (USCT) after being recruited by Major Delaney, of African descent. After the war, he was honorifically called Colonel Gregory and his family received a Civil War pension. At this point Louis George Gregory took the name of his stepfather. Due to his military service, his stepson Louis George Gregory was introduced in family situations to make friends with the European descent children of Army officers who would visit the home. George Gregory was also a leader in the community, playing a significant role in the inter-racial United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America; upon his death in 1929, the Union put out an advertisement in the Charleston Newspaper asking all Union members to attend, 1000 of both races did make it to Monrovia Union Cemetery, where headstones to George and Mary Elizabeth stand to this day.
Education.
During his elementary schooling, Louis Gregory attended the Avery Institute, the first public school open to both African American and white children in Charleston. George and Mary Elizabeth wanted children, but she lost many as infants. Mary Elizabeth died in 1891, three months after giving birth; that infant died soon after birth. Gregory's older brother Theodore died the same year. Gregory still graduated from the Avery Institute, and gave the graduation speech entitled, "Thou Shalt Not Live For Thyself Alone." Avery Institute honors Gregory by displaying his portrait in their preserved classroom.
Gregory gained a stepbrother, Harrison Gregory, when his stepfather married the widow Lauretta Gregory. Lauretta's husband, Louis Noisette, a Civil War veteran, had died while she was pregnant with Harrison.
The Noisette family became prominent in Charleston after leaving Saint-Domingue. Philippe Stanislas Noisette was the young son of a Nantes horticulturalist working for the King of France. His father sent him to Saint-Domingue to send back exotic flowers. While there he married Celestine, who was of African descent. They fled the violence of the Haitian Revolution to Charleston, together with two of Celestine's family members.
Because of the miscegenation laws of South Carolina, Philippe had to declare Celestine a slave in order to have her live with him. They had six children together, who were mixed-race. In 1809 he requested manumission of one of the family members, but the legislature refused it.
One of the two men fathered Benjamin who became enslaved by the Solomon family. Benjamin's children recorded in an 1893 deposition that throughout their enslavement their father made clear to them to remember their last name was Noisette rather than that of their enslaver. Harrison escaped enslavement in 1862 and joined the Union Navy on May 6, 1862, in Port Royal, South Carolina. Benjamin also escaped enslavement in 1862 and went on to the freeman's Camp Barker, as it was known then, in Washington, D.C. Gregory's step-brother's father Louis Noisette remained enslaved until African-American soldiers liberated Charleston in February 1865. He then joined the 33rd USCT Regiment as a drummer to help liberate his mother and sister who remained enslaved in Savannah. After the war Louis Noisette married Lauretta, and had the child Harrison Noisette who became Harrison Gregory.
University and professional years.
Gregory's generous stepfather paid for his first year at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied English literature. Using the tailoring skills his mother had taught him he managed the finances needed for the rest of his bachelor's degree. There being no law schools that would accept him in the South, he continued on to Howard University in Washington, D.C., one of the few universities to accept black graduate students, to study law and received his LL.B degree in Spring 1902. He was admitted to the bar, and along with another young lawyer, James A. Cobb, opened a law office in Washington, D.C. The partnership ended in 1906, after Gregory started to work in the United States Department of the Treasury. In 1904 Gregory was listed as a supporter of the committee for a celebration of Booker T. Washington. In 1906 Gregory served as vice president of the Howard University Law School Alumni association. Gregory had been attracted to the Niagara Movement and active in the Bethel Literary and Historical Society, a Negro organization devoted to discussing issues of the day – he had been elected a vice president in 1907 and president in 1909. Meanwhile, Gregory was visible in the newspapers over racist incidents.
As a Baháʼí.
Encountering the religion.
At the Treasury Department, Gregory met Thomas H. Gibbs, with whom he formed a close relationship. Gibbs, while not being a Baháʼí himself, shared information about the religion to Gregory, and Gregory attended a lecture by Lua Getsinger, a leading Baháʼí, in 1907. In that meeting he met Pauline Hannen and her husband who invited him to many other meetings through the next couple of years, and Gregory was much affected by the behavior of the Hannens and the religion after having become disillusioned with Christianity. Among the readings Gregory reviewed on the religion was an early edition of The Hidden Words. The meetings were also held among the poor at a school and a Baháʼí view of Christian scripture and prophecy much affected him and presented a framework for a reformulation of society. While the Hannens went on pilgrimage in 1909 to visit ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, in Palestine, Gregory left the Treasury Department and established his practice in Washington, D.C. When the Hannens returned, Gregory once again started attending meetings on the religion and the burgeoning Baháʼí community of DC was holding more and more meetings - particularly integrated meetings of the Hannens and some others. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá also began to communicate either in letters or to those that visited on pilgrimage a preference for integration. On July 23, 1909, Gregory wrote to the Hannens that he was an adherent of the Baháʼí Faith:
It comes to me that I have never taken occasion to thank you specifically for all your kindness and patience, which finally culminated in my acceptance of the great truths of the Baháʼí 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.
First actions.
At this point, Gregory started organizing meetings for the religion as well, including one under the auspices of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society, a Negro organization of which he was president previously. He also wrote to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, who responded to Gregory that he had high expectations of Gregory in the realm of race relations. The Hannens asked that Gregory attend some organizational meetings to help consult on opportunities for the religion. With such meetings the practical aspects of integration with some Baháʼís became crystallized while for others it became a strain they had to work to overcome. Gregory received a letter in November 1909 from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá saying:
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, that is the universal truth which is the oneness of the kingdom of the human race... Rely as much as thou canst on the True One, and be thou resigned to the Will of God, so that like unto a candle thou mayest be enkindled in the world of humanity and like unto a star thou mayest shine and gleam from the Horizon of Reality and become the cause of the guidance of both races.
In 1910 Gregory stopped working as a lawyer and began a long period of service, holding meetings and traveling for the religion and writing and lecturing on the subject of racial unity. Some initial meetings were held in parallel among the races, but ʻAbdu'l-Bahá made it known that the direction of the community was toward integrated meetings. The fact that upper class white Baháʼís repeatedly achieved steps towards integration was a confirmation to Gregory of the power of the religion. Gregory, still president of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society, arranged for presentations by several Baháʼís to the group.
Gregory initiated a major trip through the South. He traveled to Richmond, Virginia; Durham and other locations in North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina, the city of his family and childhood; and Macon, Georgia, where he told people about the religion. In Charleston he is known to have presented talks at the Carpenter's Union Hall. He contacted a priest who had encountered the religion at Green Acre in Maine, where he met Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl. In Charleston Alonzo Twine converted; he was an African-American lawyer and the first known Baháʼí of South Carolina. But Twine was later committed to a mental institution by his mother and family priest, where he died a few years later. He continued to hand out Baháʼí pamphlets he had made himself.
Gregory began to participate more in the early Baháʼí administration. In February 1911 he was elected to Washington's Working Committee of the Baháʼí Assembly, the first African American to serve in that position. In April 1911 Gregory served as an officer of Harriet Gibbs Marshall's Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression, along with George William Cook of Howard University and others. The school was advertised, especially in black publications, in several cities across the country.
Pilgrimage.
In late 1910 ʻAbdu'l-Bahá invited Gregory to go on pilgrimage. Gregory sailed from New York City on March 25, 1911. He traveled overland through Europe to Palestine and Egypt. In Palestine, Gregory met with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, where he also visited the Shrine of Baháʼu'lláh and the Shrine of the Báb. In Egypt he met with Shoghi Effendi. While in the Mideast, he discussed the race issue in the United States with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and the other pilgrims. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said there was no distinction between the races. During this time, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá started encouraging Gregory and Louisa Mathew, a white English pilgrim, to get to know each other.
After leaving Egypt, Gregory traveled to Germany, where he spoke at a number of gatherings to Baháʼís and their friends. When he returned to the United States, he continued to travel, mainly in the southern United States to talk about the Baháʼí faith.
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