User:Smkolins/Sandbox5

There would be a representative summary "lede" at the top here.

Born and raised

Eva Lee Flack was born about February 17, 1919, and lived in Asheville, North Carolina, some 19 years. She was a child of Edward and Minnie Flack. Edward was from Rutherfordton and Minnie was born in Henderson County.

It remains unclear which schools she would have attended though she may have reached high school at the Allen School.

And then the family moved to Los Angeles about 1938 where Flack then lived another 4 years. In 1939 she was visible attending Los Angeles City College and was a member of the International Club at a meeting with a talk entitled "International Problems and the Young American". In January 1940 Flack was president of an AME Zion Young Women's Missionary Society.

Adrienne Ellis recalled encountering Flack about 1940 and that she was active in a Bahá'í youth group in Los Angeles area between then and 1942. By 1941 Flack was at Geyserville Bahá'í School attending a show in Cloverdale that a group of women and a man had gone to see, and was part of a panel discussing Bahá'í views on peace. She also co-sang some negro spirituals at a concert.

In February 1942 Flack co-presented on the International Bahá'í Youth Day at a meeting in Los Angeles, while she was living in Los Angeles on E. 11th St. with her parents. In July she attended the Geyserville Bahá'í School in central California at a dinner reception held to hear a radio broadcast on the religion. Other newspaper coverage mentioned most of what we know of her growing up and already planning on homefront pioneering back to Asheville bringing Adrienne Ellis with her. That was still the plan in August as reported in Baha'i News, However by October they were in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Homefront Pioneering

First spiritual assembly of North Carolina including Eva seated far right

In October Flack and Ellis arrived in Greensboro where there was a brewing community thanks to Ruth Moffett and declarations including Louise Sawyer and Naomi Simmons. The March 1943 Roll of Honor for pioneering during the Seven Year Plan with a goal of raising Assemblies in every state before the Centenary of the Bahá'í Faith in 1944 included Flack on this list for Greensboro.

A teaching conference was held in Greenville South Carolina November 14-15, 1942, with 20 Bahá'ís and 16 non-Bahá'ís attending from 7 states - Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, California, Illinois, DC, and Tennessee. Stanwood Cobb was the keynote speaker, the welcome was by Ruth Moffett and Flack and Ellis sang. At least one white influential Baháʼí was uncomfortable with the integrated meetings - Emogene Hoagg - and there were reports the FBI was specifically checking on Baháʼís in Greenville who had more forcefully defied Jim Crow laws and social tensions were felt with McAllister - all this seeming to lower interest from higher social class white people, despite the fact that Shoghi Effendi had continued to hold a standard that black seekers of the religion should be welcomed equally to white and the white not be given privilege of being first, though not going against public law in arranging for meetings.

When the Assembly formed that April 1943, Eva also married Charles McAllaster who then was gone to serve in Africa during WWII. They were married in the AME Church in Gilmer, North Carolina, with witnesses pioneers Adrienne Ellis and Helen T. Inderlied (herself from Binghamton, New York), and Greensborian Naomi Simmons. In addition to homefront pioneering and getting married she served on the Regional Teaching Committee covering North and South Carolina by that summer. McAllister was known to have visited the Atlanta School of Social Work in Georgia in 1943-4.

After forming the Greensboro Assembly a number of public presentations occurred and then they held the "Ninth World Baha'i youth symposium" scheduled for the end of February, 1944, which included included Pvt John C. Eichenhauer, Flack and Ellis, and held at the Windsor Community Center east of downtown. In April/May she joined the Flack family at the Centenary Intercontinental Conference with services in Wilmette. In late December when it was announced Glenn Shook of Wheaton College would speak at McAllister's home.

In January 1945 Flack and Ellis did a tour from Greensboro to Fayetteville to Durham, there guests of Julia Simmons of Gillespie St by early February, before returning back to Greensboro. In Fayetteville they had spoken at elementary schools and colleges and the Evans Metropolitan AME Zion Church.

In March several Bahá'í youth meet with Pfc Oliver Eastman, Adrienne Ellis, Eva McAllister and Cassandra Brown mentioned though at who's home at 513 High St isn't known. In June Flack was a witness along with Naomi Simmons for the marriage of Adrienne Ellis and William A. Reeves. In October an article by McAllister for World Order was published. She begins: "The old order is crumbling and affecting the youth of today more than any other members of our society. The débris of our civilization is displaying the result of racial, political and religious prejudices.… Youth the world over are being wounded, and even buried, by a crumbling civilization while a few are pushing it aside and dedicating their lives to the rising World Order of Bahá'u'lláh…" and begins holding up the promise of justice and unity and the rectitude of conduct that is needed even in the face of the threat of death.

The McAllisters left Greensboro around November, 1945, though she was on the committee organizing the state convention in December to elect the delegate to attend the 1946 national convention along with Joseph Sawyer, husband of Lousie.

California

Across August to October 1947 McAllister was visible giving several talks at the LA Bahá'í Center.

There was no mention of McAllister some years, then the earlier 1950s were a period of some sadness and challenge for McAllister. In March 1952 when Flack's father Edward V. Flack died in Los Angeles. In 1953 McAllister's infant daughter Patience died, followed by the infant son John both in Los Angeles.

It is known that McAllister attended further sessions of the Geyserville Bahá'í School. She sang with some of the Ellis family giving an "all negro" program of spirituals and readings from Bahá'u'lláh in the summer of 1955, and in 1956 she took a picture of the Ellis family while attending.

In January 1962 McAllister helped with the winter session at Geyserville, and in August Eva's mother died in Los Angeles.

McAllister was noted having previously been a professional photographer; in 1964 she was employed as a kindergarten teacher for the San Jose Unified School District, had received a Bachelors of Science for kindergarten education from San Jose State College in 1962, was mother of two, serving on the San Jose Spiritual Assembly since 1956, and on the Geyserville faculty for classes in 1964.

In April 1966 McAllister gave a talk at Charles & Mrs. Jenkins home in Chico, and at a Women's Club meeting in nearby Oroville, California. Later that summer she read readings at a Bahá'í wedding held at Geyserville.

No information on her death has been identified.