February 23 2018 talk at the University of Maryland hosted by its Baha'i Club

Lex Musta tells the interracial story of how the January 20th 1955 first-in-the-nation student-led sit-in integration of a lunch counter came about (6:00), led by Dr. Helen Hicks in Baltimore from Morgan State University. It was facilitated by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) activity in Baltimore founded by Dr. Herbert Kelman and Robert Watts in 1952, an interracial coalition which laid the ground work for the national student-led sit-in movement six years before Greensboro (7:10). In 1953 CORE integrates (Kresge) KMart lunch counters in Baltimore (8:15). In 1953 CORE integrates Woolworth lunch counters in Baltimore (9:37). In 1954 CORE integrates McCrory's and Grant's lunch counters in Baltimore with sit-ins, one year before 1955 first-in-nation student sit-ins (9:55). 1954 Read's Drug Store integrated by CORE's Robert Watts and his Morgan State Students and their 8 month sit-in, leading up to Dr. Helen Hicks led sit in (10:14). 1946-1952 NAACP integration of Ford's Theater with the participation of a 13 year old Helen Hicks, led by Adah Jenkins Baltimore Interracial Fellowship, Professor of Music at Morgan State and Charter Member of CORE. Leading actors Basil Rathbone and Edward Robinson boycotted Ford as a result. Dr. Lilly Jackson joined this protest leading to Franz Lehar's 'The Merry Widow' being the first desegregated play perform. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considers every American to be proud of the Jackson family's contributions to Civil Rights (13:40). 1932 Juanita Jackson desegregated her dormitory in Pennsylvania after being denied schooling in Baltimore. Thurgood Marshall also integrated a movie theater in Pennsylvania after being denied schooling in Baltimore. Thurgood Marshall and Juanita Jackson founded and led Baltimore's City Wide Young People's Forum in 1931. The youth started the program: "No employment, No Business." The Forum was based at the Bethel AME Church in Baltimore. The daughter activated her mother Dr. Lilly Jackson to become the President of the NAACP supported financially by her father Keifer Jackson who popularized films with showings of positive portrayals of African Descent Americans (18:50). Juanita Jackson helped Lieutenant Violet Hill Whyte, become the first ever African Descent American Police Officer in Baltimore in 1937, the daughter of the Pastor of Bethel AME Church Daniel Hill (21:14). Juanita Jackson, following the murder of 9 African Americans by Baltimore Policemen from 1937-1942, and Pvt. Broadus being gunned down for hailing a non-licensed cab, she organized 150 Baltimore Organizations into a Citizen's Committee for Justice to form a 2000 person caravan of busses and cars to travel the 25 miles to Annapolis to meet with the Governor Herbert O'Conor and demand change on April 24, 1942 (21:45). The Bethel AME Church leadership in Baltimore Social Change work was established in 1785 with its first official pastor Rev. Daniel Coker penning the first African Descent American written anti-enslavement Tract in 1810, the Dialogue between a Virginian and an African minister (26:54). Mr. Church member Charles Hacket, a conductor on the underground railroad, led three years of indignation meetings (prayer and fasting for 24 hours in the church for change) to defeat 1860 bill to enslave all 100,000 African descent freemen in Maryland. (23:44). In 1863 Hacket recruited two United States Colored Troop regiments in Baltimore, the 4th Regiment in September and the 7th Regiment. December 5-8 1879 Indignation Meetings held to hire first African Descent teacher, Roberta Sheridan, in Baltimore public schools since 1865 when they were all fired. In 1885, Rev. Harvey Johnson founded the Order of the Regulators - a civil rights advocacy organization. My daughter asked for a prayerful interlude, and we sing the Song of the Prophets (25:41). Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall, with the support of Alpha Phi Alpha, integrated UMD law school with the case of Donald Gaines Murray. Carol Bond made Marshall's arguments law in 1935. In 1950, UMD was further integrated with undergrad (Hiram Whittle), graduate schools (Parren Mitchell) and women (Ester McCready). Parren Mitchell went on to become the first Southern Descent Senator since 1898 in the South, in 1970 (31:33). Ten hate crimes on UMD Campus in 2017, stands in contrast to its first African Descent Chancelor John Slaughter's vision to "become the model multiracial, multicultural and multigenerational academic campus. (34:26)" Cause of hate crimes and difficulty integrating UMD owes to universities racist roots in the Goodwood and Riversdale Concentration camps which ceded land to found the university in 1856 by the Calvert camp wardens. The Calvert Concentration camp warden crest flies today in the UMD school and Maryland state flags (35:50). Maryland slavery ended in 1864 due to 91% support of Maryland European Descent Union regiments who voted to end it, while other European Descent Marylanders voted 52% to keep slavery (37:00). Actions to address UMD's 10 hate crimes, include partnering with Confederacy Kappa Alpha fraternity to host a cross culture show with same energy it hosted Minstrel shows on campus in the 1930s, in the 1971 founded UMD Freedom House (Nyumburo Cultural Center) to advance integration (37:52). The Baltimore Interacial brotherhood of Baltimore and E.B. DuBois developed 'Units for Unity,' which could be reused for the Core Diversity requirement of the UofMD launched in 1994 and taught by students (40:03) George Hacket's Grave was saved in 1949 by NAACP, now overgrown in Johnsville Maryland's Laurel Cemetery, where students could save it again and honor him (41:21).

Racial Amity: It Runs In The Family

March 2018 Talk at the home of Barbara Talley

Lex Musta tells the story of how Charlotte Emily Brittingham Dixon received a three month sanctification in Princess Anne, MD in 1896 (3:15), and went to Chicago in search of the Manifestation of God she felt certain was upon the earth (5:10), she found Him in the person of Baha'u'llah and returned to the Southern United States to establish the DC Baha'i Community in 1898 (10:35), she was soon joined by Laura Barney in 1902 who invited over the greatest Baha'i Philosopher of the time Mirza Abu'l Fad'l to write the book Baha'i Proofs and teach the young community its new Faith (16:25), Pauline Hannen consequently adopted the Faith and began to share it with DC's African American community (18:25), the well known spiritual wife of the Rev. John W. Pope, Pocahontas, whose husband comes from the richest African American family in North Carolina, became the first African American in DC to adopt the Faith in 1907 (27:30), the first of those liberated from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello concentration camp in 1865 to receive a college education and noted suffragist, Mrs. Coralie Cook, was a cousin of Pocahontas' husband, and adopted the Faith in 1910. She then taught her Employer, the most successful African American Female Entrepreneur in town and a national leader of African American music, Mrs. Harriet Gibbs Marshall. She provided her Washington Conservatory of Music at 902 T Street, NW for use as the first African American owned Baha'i Center in America (30:45). Together these women formed the first Integrated Baha'i Community in America when they all gathered in an integrated fashion for their monthly meeting at Pauline's sister Fanny's house in April of 1910.

Carrie Minor Johnson and Judge Siddons partner to save her life We tell the story of how Carrie Minor Johnson grew up in Washington DC where the Other Tradition saved her and the city from the Racial Pogrom of 1919: Carrie Minor Johnson's Childhood on G Street (3:06), First Integrated US Baha'i Gathering on G Street in 1910 (4:36), 1919 DC Racial Pogrom reaches Carrie Minor Johnson (5:25), African American Carrie Minor Johnson partners with European American Federal Judge Siddons to be save her life (8:25), The DC Baha'i Community's 110 year experience with the Other Tradition (9:38), Mr. Louis George Gregory exemplar of the Other Tradition (14:39), The DC Baha'i Community responds to the 1919 Racial Pogrom (20:02).

Dr. Richard Thomas presents The Other Tradition at the 2012 National Race Amity Conference Lex Musta recalls his introduction to 'The Other Tradition' by Dr. Richard Thomas in 2012, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (3:50), Focus Hope (7:30), Detroit Interracial Cooperation after 1943 and 1967 Pogroms (8:45), Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress published by the Association for Baha'i Studies in 1993 (11:15), Understanding Interracial Unity: A Study of U.S. Race Relations published in the SAGE series on Race and Ethnic Relations in 1995 (11:30), Black and Jewish Faculty on College Campuses and Minister Farrakhan (15:00), Grimke Sisters (17:00), Bacon's Rebellion (20:00), Revolutionary War (23:15), John Brown meets Frederick Douglass (27:00), USCT (31:15), Knights of Labor (31:30), Reconstruction (32:00), NAACP (32:45), Northern Migration (34:30), Herbert Aptheker (37:00), Congress of Industrial Organizations (37:30), Highlander Folk School (38:15), Southern Conference for Human Welfare (38:30), Southern Conference Educational Fund (38:45), Howard Thurman (40:30), Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (40:45), Baha'i Civil Rights Work in 1964 (44:15).