Alabama

Alabama
Bahá'ís of Huntsville and guests, 1959.
Location of Alabama
History: Firsts
-	Local Assembly	1943, Birmingham

Alabama is a state of the United States of America.

Bahá’í travel teachers and pioneers attempted to establish the religion in Alabama from as early as 1915 with efforts beginning in earnest in the early 1930's however the community did not begin to become well established until the early 1940's. Bahá’í activity in the state was modest throughout the 1950's but began to increase in the 1960's leading up to mass teaching beginning at the opening of the 1970's.

The Bahá’í community of the state is currently under the jurisdiction of the Regional Bahá’í Council of the Southeastern States, and the Association of Religion Data Archives estimated that there were 1,441 Bahá’ís in the state as of 2010.

History

Louis Gregory visited Alabama twice on teaching trips before 1915. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá mentioned the state in one of the Tablets of the Divine Plan revealed on March 29, 1916, writing the following:

"In the Southern States of the United States, the friends are few, that is, in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Consequently 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.

In 1931 Louis Gregory, who was African-American, and Willard McKay, who was white, went on a teaching tour which included visiting Alabama and they were the first inter-racial teaching team to visit the state. As of 1933 there was an isolated Bahá’í, Mrs. H. W. Bivins, living in Decatur. In 1935 the National Spiritual Assembly of the U.S. & Canada appointed Dr. Walter B. Guy to serve as a regional teaching representative for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama collectively, and in 1936 the Assembly established a Regional Teaching Committee for North & South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

As of 1937 there were no Bahá’ís on record as living in Alabama at all and Louis Gregory embarked on a teaching tour centered around Tuskegee to re-establish contacts he had made on previous visits to the state in the hopes of establishing a Bahá’í Group of Tuskegee, and Walter H. Blakely pioneered to Birmingham initially planning on staying just for the winter but he found connections which allowed him to become a long-term pioneer. By 1938 Blakely had found several people interested in studying the Faith and Gregory had found employment with the Tuskegee Institute and one of his students from Montgomery declared becoming the first Bahá’í of the capital, and as of late 1938 a Regional Teaching Committee responsible for only Alabama and Florida had been established. By 1940 Martha Fettig had pioneered to Decatur where she taught contacts and investigated for teaching via radio and she also visited Birmingham to teach contacts.

As of 1941 the Regional Teaching Committee responsible for Alabama was also responsible for Kentucky, Middle and East Tennessee and Northern Georgia, and the state was one of twenty in the USA which had no Local Spiritual Assembly. In 1942 a Regional Teaching Committee for just Alabama and Tennessee was established, and a Teaching Conference was held in Cheaha State Park which was attended by forty-nine people. In Autumn 1942 Louis Gregory spoke at Colleges in Alabama to teach the Faith. In 1943 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Birmingham was established which was the first in Alabama, and in 1944 it was incorporated. In April 1945 Bahiyyih Ford visited Birmingham during a teaching tour of the Southern States, and in 1946 Philip Marangella visited Birmingham, Greenville, Columbia, Augusta, and Mobile on a teaching tour. Alvin and Gertrude Blum visited Birmingham to teach during 1946 as well.

In 1953 the Birmingham Bahá’í community contributed a display to the Alabama State Fair which enabled them to distributed 2677 pieces of Bahá’í literature to visitors which was the widest proclamation of the Faith in the State at that point. In 1954 the Birmingham community held a meeting to study the American Bahá’ís in the Time of World Peril for all the Bahá’ís in the State and collaborated with the National Inter-Racial Committee to hold a public meeting on Unity. In 1955 Margery McCormick, who had been appointed to the newly established Auxiliary Board for the Americas, visited Birmingham and Mobile in Alabama. The Birmingham Bahá’ís reported that while they had become discouraged due to being unable to sell Bahá’í literature after placing advertisements in the press they found that literature they had donated to a local library had been regularly borrowed and the library requested additional copies to lend. As of June 1955 Mobile and Montgomery were designated goal cities for the American Bahá’í community to establish Local Spiritual Assemblies.

In 1963 the Women's Missionary Union, a Baptist organization, held a program on the Bahá’í Faith for the purposes of refuting it as a false doctrine. In 1964 the Huntsville Bahá’í community publicized World Religion Day locally which resulted in all Bahá’í books in the local library being borrowed, and the Local Spiritual Assembly of Huntsville was established that year. Early in 1965 Bahá’ís participated in a human rights march in Montgomery, Alabama, at the request of the National Spiritual Assembly, and in July 1965 a youth institute was held in Mobile. Towards the end of 1965 a Bahá’í State Convention for Alabama was held at the Holiday Inn in Birmingham.

In 1966 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Mobile was established, however it lapsed the following year along with the Local Spiritual Assembly of Birmingham. While two Assemblies were lost in 1967 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Montgomery was also formed, and the Birmingham Assembly reformed in 1969.

As of 1970 the body responsible for coordinating efforts to teach the Faith in Alabama was the Deep South Teaching Committee which was also responsible for several neighboring States. Under the Committee mass teaching began to take place in the southern states including in Alabama and in a short period between 1970 and 1971 there were 175 declarations in the state. As of 1976 there were at least nine Local Spiritual Assemblies in Alabama and special teaching projects were planned for the state for that year, and by April three additional counties of the State had been opened to the Faith.

Notable individuals

Residents

The following people were born in Alabama or lived there for a notable amount of time.

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Monuments

Graves, monuments or memorials of the following people are located in Alabama.

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See also

• All articles about Alabama