Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Oklahoma City
City in the United States
LSA of Oklahoma City, 1938
History: Firsts
-	Local Assembly	1938
How to contact:
-	Phone	(405) 317-8547
-	Email	lsa.okc.ok@gmail.com
-	State	Oklahoma
-	Country	United States
Official Website		http://okcbahai.org
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Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma, a state of the United States of America. It was the first city in Oklahoma to have a Local Spiritual Assembly.

The Bahá’í community of the city was firmly established in the late 1930s with an Assembly being established in 1938.

History

In December, 1930, Orcella Rexford visited Oklahoma City delivering two talks at an auditorium with attendance of seven hundred at both events. Seventy-five copies of Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era were sold while she was in the city. Despite significant interest there were no declarations and no Bahá’ís in the city until January 1937 when Albert P. Entzminger pioneered to the city with his wife, Alice, and their two children, opening both the city and the state of Oklahoma to the Faith.

By June 1937 the Entzminger's had established a Bahá’í study group, in September the first Nineteen Day Feast in the city was held, and by the end of the year the community had grown to eight members and was holding two study classes a week and one children's class. In April, 1938, the Local Spiritual Assembly of Oklahoma City was established, the first in the State, and by the end of the year the community was firmly established enough that the Assembly began focusing on efforts to establish a community in the neighboring city of El Reno. In 1939 Bahá’í Roan Orloff visited the city in connection with her role in the Esperanto movement and she established contact between the Esperantists and Alfred Entzminger.

In 1941 Beatrice Irwin visited the city where she delivered talks at Oklahoma City University, Douglass High School, Inman-Page School, the University Women's Forum, the Pen-Women's Club, the Hadassah Society of Jewish women, the Harbor Longmire Furniture Company, and to meetings held at the YWCA and Hotel Biltmore. In 1945 Edris Rice-Wray visited Oklahoma City speaking at firesides, and in 1946 Alvin Blum, and Sara E. Witt visited as travel teachers.

In 1952 the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States sent a cable to the Annual Convention of the NAACP which was held in Oklahoma City that year sending good wishes for the event, and in 1954 newly appointed Auxiliary Board member Margery McCormick visited the city. In April, 1955, an Area Teaching Conference for the South Central States was held in Oklahoma City with consultation being focused on Bahá’í Community Life. In 1957 Ludmila Van Sombeek gave a talk in Oklahoma City which was announced in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper, and a portion of that years Naw-Rúz celebration was televised on local Oklahoma news on the channel KQW-TV. In 1959 the Oklahoma Bahá’í community participated in a United Nations pilot project entitled the World Affairs Program Clinic, hosted an event they called an International Mixer which was a social evening celebrating international cuisine and culture, and contributed an exhibit booth to the Oklahoma State Fair.

In 1960 the Oklahoma City Bahá’í community received local press coverage when they hosted a racially integrated picnic to celebrate Race Amity Day, and in 1963 Sarah Pereira delivered a talk to a public meeting attended by over fifty people to commemorate World Religion Day. In 1964 the Local Spiritual Assembly of Oklahoma City was officially incorporated becoming the first incorporated Assembly in Oklahoma, and in 1966 the first Bahá’í Center in Oklahoma was dedicated in Oklahoma City with Velma Sherrill and Paul Pettit speaking at the dedication. Also in 1966 Bahá’í children were granted an exemption from attending school in oklahoma City on Bahá’í Holy Days, and in December a Youth Conference was held in the city.

In 1973 the Third National Bahá’í Youth Conference of the United States was held in Oklahoma City and was attended by four thousand Bahá’ís. Hand of the Cause William Sears spoke at the Conference, Seals and Croft performed a concert, and the National Spiritual Assembly met during the Conference with its members making presentations. In 1975 Rouhieh Musette McComb visited Oklahoma City to give a presentation of her memories of meeting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá when she was a child. In 1978 two Oklahoma City Bahá’ís were interviewed on the television program Expressions, and in 1979 a Powwow attended by over two hundred Native Americans was co-organized by the cities Bahá’í community.

In 1980 a fund-raising auction was held in Oklahoma City to raise money for the National Fund which raised $7,000. In 1985 Bahá’ís participated in an Inter-Faith service in Oklahoma City held to coincide with the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Conference with Bahá’í Iran Toosi speaking on the Bahá’í view of peace. In 1988 a new Bahá’í Center for the city was purchased, and as of 1992 weekly dialogue sessions on racism were being held at the Center. In 1994 the first receipt for donations from the Oklahoma City community towards construction of the Arc in the Holy Land was hung in the Bahá’í Center. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 the Bahá’í community co-founded an interfaith group dedicated to meeting the needs of victims of the bombing, with a Bahá’í serving as the groups chair.

In 2001 the Oklahoma City Bahá’ís organized the Garden of Light Bahá’í School consisting of children's classes which received significant interest and participation from members of the wider community, and the Oklahoma City Bahá’í community continues to host children's classes as well as devotionals study circles and junior youth empowerment programs to the present day.