The Baháʼí Faith in South Carolina begins in the transition from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement but defines another approach to the problem and proceeds according to its teachings. The first mention in relation to the history of the religion came in the 1860s in a newspaper article. Following this, the first individual from South Carolina to find the religion was Louis Gregory in 1909, followed by individuals inside the state. Communities of Baháʼís were soon operating in North Augusta, Columbia and Greenville and struggled with segregation culture through the 1950s, both externally and internally. However, in the 1969-1973 period, a very remarkable and somewhat unsustainable period of conversions to the religion on the basis of a meeting of Christian and Baháʼí religious ideas established a basis of community across several counties - notably Marion, Williamsburg, and Dillon, served by the Louis Gregory Institute and its radio station WLGI, but also across the wider area. That community continues and has gathered news coverage as part of the second-largest religion in South Carolina.
Early history
Firsts The first connections of South Carolina with the Baháʼí Faith occur in the presence of the first Baháʼí to join the religion in the West, with his service in the American Civil War in South Carolina 30 years before he would join the religion, followed by re-publication of the first paper to mention events related to the history of the Baháʼí Faith.
1864-5 After seeking out training to be an officer in black infantry units, by May, 1864, Thornton Chase, later recognized as the first occidental Baháʼí, was second in charge of one hundred men, Company K of the 26th Regiment Infantry U.S. Colored Troops which fought two battles south of Charleston, S.C. and was wounded. He then sought out a second opportunity to serve and in 1865 was promoted to captain and commanded Company D of the 104th United States Colored Infantry.* That unit was organized at Beaufort, S. C., April–June, 1865, and did guard duty at various points in South Carolina till February, 1866. Chase's resignation was accepted November 7, 1865, in Beaufort, S. C.* The law referenced in that cited is here: He would join the religion 30 years later. Louis Gregory's future stepfather, George Gregory, was First Sergeant in Company C of the 104th in 1866.
The first mention related to the history of the religion known in South Carolina was in a newspaper article. It was published in June 1865 in The Daily Phoenix of Columbia, South Carolina, on the front page, reviewing events that occurred from 1844 to 1850 or so. The source of the extended quote is not named and makes mistakes typical of the period. See also Josephus on Jesus. It was originally presented in an article in The Literary World of June 14, 1851, as a letter dated February 10, 1851, by Dr. Rev. Austin H. Wright to the American Oriental Society. It was subsequently also published in a newspaper on June 26, 1851, and was published in a German newspaper in 1851 and translated by his superior, Rev. Justin Perkins. Wright, father of Lucy Myers Wright Mitchell and John Henry Wright, was a medical missionary from New England, and gained his medical degree in Virginia. Wright was the first person to write a paper giving an account of Bábism, and died in what was then called Urumiah, Persia, January 14, 1865. The Daily Phoenix itself began publication in March 1865 after Sherman's March to the Sea burned a third of the city or more and by April was being published as a daily paper.
Louis George Gregory
Louis George Gregory was the first person from South Carolina to join the Baháʼí Faith. He was born on June 6, 1874, in Charleston, South Carolina, to African-American parents liberated during the Civil War including his birth father that died when Gregory was very young - Ebenezer (E. F.) George, who died before 1880. In 1881, his mother married George Gregory. During his elementary schooling, Gregory attended the first public school that was open to both African Americans and Whites in Charleston and then the Avery Institute, the leading school for Americans of African descent in Charleston, and gave the graduation speech entitled, "Thou Shalt Not Live For Thyself Alone." Gregory attended Fisk University, Howard University, and was admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C., in 1902. In 1906, Gregory started to work in the United States Department of the Treasury, and continued to rise in society in various forms of service to the community and the profession. Meanwhile, Gregory was visible in the newspapers over racist incidents.
While at the Treasury Department, Gregory heard of the Baháʼí Faith and attended a lecture by Lua Getsinger, a leading Baháʼí, in 1907. In that meeting, he met Pauline Hannen, raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, and her husband, and they invited him to many other meetings. Gregory was much affected by the behavior of the Hannens and the religion after having become disillusioned with Christianity.
Unbeknownst to Gregory, the next known newspaper article mentioning the early days of the religion in South Carolina was in 1909, when The Manning Times printed a somewhat inaccurate article on the Báb. 1909 was also a year of changes for Gregory - he joined the Baháʼí Faith, received a personal letter from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, was elected president of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society, left the Treasury Department and established his practice in Washington, D.C.
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.
The letter from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said in part:
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 lifelong service to the religion, largely by holding meetings and traveling for the religion, and wrote and lectured on the subject of racial unity and the religion. That year Gregory initiated a major trip through the South to promulgate the religion. He travelled to Richmond, Virginia, Durham, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, the city of his family and childhood, and Macon, Georgia. After this first trip Gregory went on pilgrimage and was elected to positions in the religion and worked on concerns in race-integration in Washington, D.C., which were settled with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's visit, and his marriage - Gregory eventually returned to traveling to promote the religion but his endeavors were national in scope against a backdrop of societal challenges like Lynching in the United States and Jim Crow laws.
Alonzo Twine
Where Gregory had gone on to be a lawyer in 1902 in the relative North, African-American Alonzo E. Twine became a practicing lawyer registered with the South Carolina Supreme Court by 1897 and argued cases into 1910. This did not prevent him from being beaten publicly by another lawyer in 1903. His father was a freeborn carpenter and Union Army veteran, his mother a domestic servant. This was during the Tillman era and disfranchisement, 1890–1914.
Gregory spoke at a number of engagements in Charleston in 1910 and encountered a minister who had been to Green Acre and heard of the religion. Gregory also addressed the group of local Black lawyers. Twine, a trustee of the Old Bethel United Methodist Church, was the first to identify himself as a Baháʼí in South Carolina. Gregory wrote to the Hannens of it, "…[Twine] was particularly impressed with the explanation concerning 'clouds.' He added that if Christ were to come through the literal clouds, he certainly would be hidden from half the earth, in view of its roundness." Gregory left and would be away for a number of years. In the meantime, unbeknownst to Gregory, a year later Twine was committed to a mental institution by his mother and family priest, Rev. I. E. Lowery, for "religious obsession," though he hadn't lost any work and wasn't a threat to himself or others but was judged a threat to society. He died three years later, October 26, 1914.
Lowery was still using his knowledge of the fate of Twine to warn those interested in hearing Gregory's message a few years later.
Sporadic to Sustained community
A significant starting point in the growth of a stable presence of the religion was around 1911, when Margaret Klebs, from Prussia, after joining the religion, settled in Augusta, Georgia. She learned of the religion at Green Acre and was living and working in the Augusta-North Augusta-Aiken area by 1911. She also met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá when he visited the US in 1912, including a private interview directing her to return to the South and promote the religion. By the winter of 1912-13, she was back in the Augusta-North Augusta-Aiken area. In March 1912 and May 1913, she arranged for music programs. Society editor Julia Moore of the Augusta Herald became friends with Klebs and a student of the religion and publicized events - and various students of Klebs also investigated the religion and several enrolled. In 1914, Klebs invited Joseph Hannen for a series of talks - James U. Jackson's mansion, at the African-American Schofield Normal and Industrial School, and there was a concert again at the Hampton Terrace Hotel. Klebs and the small group of Baháʼís managed to have several stories in the local paper in 1915 and 1917. At the time, there was a brief mention of a Baháʼí presence at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915.
By 1918, the community included six individuals - G. P. Talbot, Louise Biggar Talbot, Ann McKennie Verdery, Myrtis Tinsley, Julia Moore, Robert Irvin - though two had moved to Savannah, Georgia, and another was added in 1920 - Esther Sego. Louise was the community delegate to the 1919 nations convention. Baháʼí speakers continued to be invited and in 1920, Assadu'llah Mazindarani - a designated scholar sent by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá - addressed a colored audience of some 65 men who left with "tears in their eyes."
Newspapers from the 1920s to the 1940s made a variety of minor mentions of the religion.*
Tablets of the Divine Plan Though interrupted by World War I, in 1916–1919 the Tablets of the Divine Plan were written by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and released in stages - calling for attention in various areas, including a delineation of "the southern states," noting "… you must either go yourselves or send a number of blessed souls to those states, so that they may guide the people to the kingdom of heaven." Joseph Hannen, Gregory, and two others set their focus on the South starting in 1916.