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“Now I know to be black doesn’t mean to be loud and crazy or to be violent,” a teenage boy recently wrote. “I feel I am somebody.” Anthony Outler’s inbox is full of emails like this. Since 2007, when he and Kevin Mason founded Epic Empowerment, he’s been working with Atlanta-area educators and students, helping [...]
January 20, 2012 saw the premiere of Red Tails, a film highlighting the challenging and heroic efforts of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American United States Army Air Force (USAAF) servicemen during World War II. The film is about a crew of African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program who, having faced segregation while kept mostly [...]
In observance of African American History Month, we pay tribute to some notable African American Baha’is who have made significant contributions to American society.
National Race Amity Conference: What it’s about
Conference was part of an initiative that included a public celebration and a push for establishment of an annual National Race Amity Day
Stories of reconciliation, ideas for action at Race Amity Conference
Conference participant learns ways to interact in deeper ways with people from other cultures
Fifty years ago, after a two year court battle, the University of Georgia was integrated by two students, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton “Hamp” Earl Holmes. It made national news and I might have seen it on TV but don’t remember. At age eight watching the news was a peripheral event. More likely I was reading [...]
Ruth G. Richardson is a member of the Baha’i Faith and lives just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Today, Ruth is in her 80’s and enjoying her second career as a painter.
The Baha’is of Chicago were well represented at the 79th annual Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic on Aug. 9, conducting wholesome, fun children’s activities at the picnic part of the event.
Dr. Billy Roberts discusses what led him to found the Black Men’s Gathering, an organization of Baha’i men of African descent who encourage and mentor each other on their path of service to their families, communities and the world (10 minutes). Download
Robert Hayden surmounted an impoverished childhood to become the first African-American to be appointed Poet Laureate. Robert HaydenBorn Asa Bundy Sheffey in 1913 in the ironically named Paradise Valley neighborhood of Detroit, Mr. Hayden was extremely near-sighted, which kept him from participating in sports. Thus he spent much of his time reading and writing. His [...]
Robert Hayden surmounted an impoverished childhood to become the first African-American to be appointed Poet Laureate.
Van Gilmer vividly remembers participating in the March on Washington (for Jobs and Freedom) on Aug. 28, 1963, while a student at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro.
If you’re a member of a minority, and you’re not involved in decision-making at an administrative level, then society is still far from realizing the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., says Phillipe Copeland, a Baha’i in Boston who examines social issues from an African-American perspective on his blog, Baha’i Thought.
John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, who became a Baha’i in 1968, would have been 90 on Oct. 21, 2007. He was at the forefront not only of the bebop jazz phenomenon, the most vital music of its age, but of a jazz generation that included Thelonious Monk, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.
For the 78th year, the Bud Billiken Parade will step off at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 11, on Chicago’s South Side.