Long Beach, California

Long Beach
LSA of Long Beach, 1944.
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History:
Firsts
 -  Local Assembly 1930 
Official Website https://longbeachbahai.org/
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Long Beach is a city located in the U.S. State of California within Los Angeles County.

History[edit]

There were Bahá’ís living in Long Beach as early as 1910 who participated in the establishment of an informal administrative body for Bahá’ís in Los Angeles County and donated funds to the Bahá’í Temple Unity that year.[1][2] In 1911 Lua Getsinger and Aminu’llah Fareed visited Long Beach during a teaching tour of California speaking on the Bahá’í Faith at the World's Spiritual Congress held in the city.[3]

Orcella Rexford taught the Faith in Long Beach over an extended period in the 1920's, and in the late 1920's the Los Angeles Spiritual Assembly and Pacific Coast Teaching Committee assigned Beulah Storrs Lewis the responsibility of facilitating a Bahá’í Study Class in Long Beach with Lewis and Orol Platt visiting the city over a period of six months to hold a class in 1929.[4]

Teaching efforts lead to the establishment of the Spiritual Assembly of Long Beach in 1930 with the community sending delegates to that years National Convention.[5] As of 1932 the Long Beach Bahá’ís were regularly holding study classes and the Nineteen Day Feast and that year Willard Hatch and Wilhelm Madsen launched a teaching campaign in the city,[6] and the following year Forsyth Ward visited with his wife during a teaching tour of southern California.[7]

In 1934 the Long Beach Assembly lapsed,[8] and it was not until 1938 that it was able to reform a formal administrative group with the community having just seven adult members as of that year.[9] During 1942 regular firesides were held in Long Beach,[10] in 1943 Mary M. Smith pioneered to the city to assist efforts to reform an Assembly,[11] and in 1944 the Local Spiritual Assembly was re-established with three locals declaring and three pioneers arriving throughout the year.[12]

In 1959 the Long Beach community held a celebration of Naw-Ruz which had among the highest attendance of non-Bahá’í guests of any celebrations in the country that year,[13] and on April 20 that year the Local Spirtiual Assembly was incorporated.[14] In 1964 the Long Beach Local Spiritual Assembly launched a Book-A-Month programme aiming to encourage Bahá’ís in the community to deepen through individual reading, use local and national library services, and build up personal Bahá’í libraries.[15] In 1965 seven Bahá’ís of Long Beach pioneered to Lakewood to help establish a Local Spiritual Assembly there.[16]

In December 1975 a major teaching conference, on the theme of Each One, Teach One, was held in Long Beach which was attended by eight hundred Bahá’ís. Speakers at the conference included Hand of the Cause William Sears, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Anthony Lease, Velma Sherrill, and Franklin Kahn.[17][18] In 1978 the Long Beach Bahá’í community gave a Unity Award to the hosts of the radio program Ecumenical Insights for its work promoting religious understanding and unity in communication.[19]

In 1983 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Long Beach established Friendship Teams for the purpose of organizing visits to Bahá’ís who were not participating in the community to establish friendships and facilitate community participation,[20] and that year the Mayor of Long Beach issued a proclamation noting the persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran.[21] In 1985 the Long Beach Bahá’í community organized a Prepare for Peace Conference which featured talks by Hooper Dunbar and Fred Schechter and was attended by representatives of several organizations,[22] and in 1987 Schechter returned to the city to consult with the Local Spiritual Assembly on the Six Year Plan.[23]

In 1993 a Bahá’ís participated in the Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Long Beach.[24]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Star of the West, Vol. 1(2), p 7
  2. ↑ Star of the West, Vol. 1(4), p 16
  3. ↑ Star of the West, Vol. 2(13), p 7
  4. ↑ Baha'i News (1931). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 48, Pg(s) 12. View as PDF.
  5. ↑ Baha'i News Letter (1930). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 40, Pg(s) 6. View as PDF.
  6. ↑ Baha'i News (1932). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 59, Pg(s) 5. View as PDF.
  7. ↑ Baha'i News (1933). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 72, Pg(s) 7. View as PDF.
  8. ↑ Baha'i News (1934). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 84, Pg(s) 6. View as PDF.
  9. ↑ Baha'i News (1938). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 119, Pg(s) 4. View as PDF.
  10. ↑ Baha'i News (1942). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 156, Pg(s) 8. View as PDF.
  11. ↑ Baha'i News (1943). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 164, Pg(s) 9. View as PDF.
  12. ↑ Baha'i News (1944). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. No 172, Pg(s) 20. View as PDF.
  13. ↑ Baha'i News (1959). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. No 339, Pg(s) 5. View as PDF.
  14. ↑ Baha'i News (1960). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. No 348, Pg(s) 17. View as PDF.
  15. ↑ Baha'i News (1964). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. No 403, Pg(s) 14. View as PDF.
  16. ↑ Baha'i News (1965). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. No 412, Pg(s) 18. View as PDF.
  17. ↑ Baha'i News (1976). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. No 539, Pg(s) 12. View as PDF.
  18. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1975). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 6, Issue 11, pg(s) 1. View as PDF.
  19. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1978). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 9, Issue 5, pg(s) 12. View as PDF.
  20. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1983). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 14, Issue 9, pg(s) 10. View as PDF.
  21. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1984). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 15, Issue 1, pg(s) 23. View as PDF.
  22. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1985). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 16, Issue 12, pg(s) 22. View as PDF.
  23. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1987). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 18, Issue 3, pg(s) 12. View as PDF.
  24. ↑ The American Bahá’í (1993). National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. Volume 24, Issue 7, pg(s) 9. View as PDF.
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