Robert Lee Barnes

Robert Lee Barnes (August 9, 1914 - May 16, 1991) was born in North Carolina, served in World War II, lived then in Alabama and then New Jersey, where he was visible as a Bahá'í from 1955 and worked as a public school teacher until his retirement and then moved back to the town of his birth. There he joined the NAACP and earned a noble and high minded reputation while also hosting local conferences on the Bahá'í Faith in the 1980s as well as being elected as a delegate to the national convention. He contracted cancer and was admitted to the VA hospital in Durham, though treatment proved ineffective and his friends threw a life celebration that was video taped, and then he died a few months later.

Born and raised

African American Robert Lee Barnes was the first child of husband and wife Robert Barnes (born 1894 in Bertie County, North Carolina) and Mary Price (born 1896 in Martin County) on August 9, 1914, in Williamston, North Carolina. Around then the population was alittle over 1500 people. In 1914 both his parents were known as general laborers and neither had notable education. By 1920 when the population was 1800 he was the eldest of three children of the family - he had a sister Thelma and brother Aron. The family was then renting a home on Church St.; both parents were literate and Robert Sr was a foreman in the Williamston Cooperage Company which made wooden barrels or casks. The company went out of business in 1922. It was located on the Roanoke River.

Fairly little is known of Barnes in this period beyond this. This was a period of Jim Crow laws in North Carolina.

It is known Barnes had had 1 year of high school. Schools didn't begin to consider desegregating until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education court case. The only black high school in Williamston was the Williamston Colored School, which was built 1930-31 about when he would have been a senior, and the school was later made a historic marker.

By the early 1940s he was working as a porter.

World War II, college, and Montgomery, AL

Barnes was later known as a veteran. By October 1940 he was registered with the draft living on N. 44th St, Philadelphia. He reported for active service in Ft. George Meade, Maryland, in February 1942. He was initially stationed from March 1943 at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. By November 1945 he was living in Raleigh, had earned two "battle stars" while serving 16 months overseas, and was now a student at HBCU Shaw University. He was listed as a senior from Williamston in 1946, and the Sergeant-at-arms officer of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity in 1947, finishing his Bachelor of Arts Degree the summer of 1947, and went on to post-bachelor education.

Little is otherwise known of his parents or what happened to his siblings. In June 1950 he was living on Cleveland Ct, Montgomery, Alabama, and had been granted veterans benefits and honorably discharged for his service specifying 16 mths domestic service and 16 months service in Europe. A wife was named for these benefits if he died - Emily D. Barnes - and further that his father was deceased by then while his mother continued to live at 708 Hyman St, Williamston. It is known he divorced but when and if there were children remain unknown.

Historically it is known that Bahá'í Walter Blakely moved to Birmingham in early 1938, and Louis Gregory was in contact with a Bahá'í in Montgomery around then as well. A study group on the Faith organized in Montgomery in 1938, and books were placed in the library in 1947. However, as of 1954, there were no known Bahá'ís in Montgomery. His membership with the Bahá'í Faith was listed November 1, 1955, though the location this happened is not specified.

New Jersey and the Bahá'í Faith

In 1957 Barnes was visible as a Bahá'í speaker in Ridgewood, New Jersey, having recently moved to the area come from Montgomery. The first talk was entitled "The Baha'i Faith in these troubled times" in mid-May, and was followed by another in January 1958 entitled "The Unmistable cure for the failing world". It is known he had been a teacher in the New Jersey School System and eventually retired. He was mentioned as a Paterson school teacher, near Ridgewood, in June 1958, where he gave a public talk at the home of Irma Martin who had recently attended an inter-continental Bahá'í conference herself.

Meanwhile back in his home town the Ku Klux Klan was very active in the 1960s including a well-documented rally in Williamston on October 5, 1963 attended by mostly local residents but with several carloads of attendees traveling over 150 miles to attend. Protests against the KKK and voter rallies were highlighted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in June.

In 1971 he was one of the African American members of Paterson Spiritual Assembly standing at the back of the photograph taken for the occasion.

Back to Williamston

Barnes' brother Aron died in 1977 at 708 Hyman St, Williamston.

In 1979 the 65 year old Barnes, amidst a population of alittle over 6000 was now back in Williamston as a isolated homefront pioneer, who was elected one of the two delegates from the Eastern District - by 1971 the state was not electing delegates as a whole and had been divided up into three electoral units or districts. and was still three in 1975. They had returned from the April-May national convention by mid-May. By 1991 the state was divided into 6 units. Locally, Barnes was active in the NAACP and eventually was elected president of the Williamston chapter. Successive NAACP leaders later testified that he had a reputation both of confronting the school board and local businesses on their hiring practices while still developing a reputation of wanting to serve all people.

Immediately on the heals of the 1980 national convention, Barnes organized a proclamation event in Williamston, to which 18 Bahá'ís from 7 North Carolina cities and one from New Jersey attended and to which 11 visitors came including 4 who had been attending bi-weekly informational meetings on the religion. There was radio, television, and newspaper announcements for the event and speakers at it included Dody Therlault who had just moved from Florida and Charles Bullock who had been an Auxiliary Board member for West Africa around Sierra Leone. Town Commissioner Mr. Honeyblue spoke. He also was on the Eastern District Teaching Committee which oversaw promoting the religion in the eastern part of the state from 1980 to 1989.

Barnes organized a "fellowship meeting" September 28, 1981, at a Williamston elementary school to which then an assistant to the Auxiliary Board member Jean Scales and Darian Smith were speakers. Music was contributed by a local gospel choir and Bahá'í musicians Rick and Holly Heyman. The school principal and Williamston city council representative welcomed the Bahá'ís and the President of the Martin Citizens Association also spoke - he was a teacher at a nearby university. In October Barnes advertised for homefront pioneers to join him in Williamston.

Barnes' mother Mary died in 1982 while living at 710 Hyman St. He was a delegate to the national convention again in 1982.

A public even about the Promise of World Peace statement by the Universal House of Justice was held in Williamston in 1986-7 period as well.

A celebration of his life was held in February 1991.

Died

Barnes died May 16, 1991, while living at 710 Hyman St - where his mother had died almost a decade earlier - of prostate cancer in Martin General Hospital. The friend that volunteered the information on him was Casandra Ganiet.

See also

• Williamston is in the northern Coastal Plain of North Carolina - see Coverage of the Bahá'í Faith in the inland southern Coastal Plain of North Carolina for activity to the south.

External links

• Life Celebration of Robert Barnes, taped at the Mt Shiloh Baptist Church in Williamston, NC, February 9, 1991.