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Places Louis Gregory was, did and said, and said about him. 1933 - 1951

Letters, columns and trips, 1933

Louis Gregory and Australian Baha'i, Charles A. Wragg toured the South in early 1933, especially in Virginia as "two inexperienced motorists,” got lost and nearly arrested in New Jersey.

Gregory and Parsons and others were reappointed to the national amity committee but their job was to assist and train local assemblies to undertake the tasks of holding race amity conferences. However few events took place - just Chicago, New York, and somewhat in Urbana.

"May 1933 the national amity committee gave its second annual reception in honor of the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League; two hundred people attended.”

Gregory's letter to the New York Age, May 30, 1933, was quoted, noting the common acceptance that Alexander Hamilton had black heritage.

Gregory started a column covering Race Amity progress in a series of articles in The Advocate out of Portland from mid-May period, which is missing editions. The first presently found editions of the column begins May 27, 1933. The available coverage begins with discussion of Gregory joined by an Australian Bahá'í in a trip south out of New England and an error in navigation thanks to an Anglo driver. They were presenting a performance using a 'color organ' invented by Glen Shook as a means of engaging as a multi-racial duo performance. He goes on to discuss "What it means to be a Negro in Boston" via a panel that convened. Next he starts with praise of George Marion McClellan, being familiar with his performance at the Apollo Club with various other performers. He goes on to discuss the race identity of Alexander Hamilton, then Thomas Jefferson, and the issues of identity and race. Then he speaks of a visit to Charleston SC and being handed copies of a newspaper series of editions and various narratives in a struggle for wisdom and “smut”. In the next edition he speaks to the effort of DuBois in raising the internal focus of the black community in the condition of being a segregated but not separate nation, that can also benefit from "cooperation with the whites" and that trials unveil hidden strength. He then turns to Portsmouth and events there and then a focus on how the black population is there which he describes generally a place of amity, comparable with the treatment in Europe. and listed as a guest editorialist That edition is repeated verbatim a week later. Meanwhile a few days later he appeared at a conference on African Americans At Camp Atwater in East Brookfield. He then turns to a broad review of Chicago, in general, then the Planetarium near the Exposition grounds, its status gathering the black community escaping the South and then in particular of Alain Locke and Horace Holley speaking at the National Convention. He noted that Locke abandoned his prepared remarks and spoke extemporaneously. He then closes in praise to Roland Hayes and performance in Chicago and beyond. He was still listed as a guest editorialist December 1933.

Review of annual convention and Temple in which it is held, priorities of the religion shown.

Gregory wrote a letter A Century of Progress published July 24, 1933

Gregory was among those gathered at a dinner hosted by Capt R. E. & Mrs Plato at 2326 Seventh Ave on Sunday. Social Snapshots; Capt and Mrs. R. E. Plato. -> the region is highly commercialized now

Gregory was quoted from Star of the West into the Pasadena Star-News by Mrs Stuart French in September.

Before Sept the Gregorys were able to be together for some four months at their home in Portsmouth, NH. (Approximately May-August) During which there was a Green Acre Race Amity conference

Another encouraging letter from Shoghi Effendi praising his high spiritual achievement came in October and also continued to look for opportunity teach in the South.

Gregory was noted as spending several weeks in Harlem as a guest of Mrs. Annie K. Lewis, of 259 West 137th St.

By November the Gregory-Wragg trip with the color organ had failed and they returned north. Gregory was in New York spending 10 weeks giving talks. He continued exploring opportunities but none remain documented.

Gregory was among the guests of R E. & Mrs Plato, 2326 Seventh Ave, NY

1934 trips

Agnes Parsons was struck and killed by a car in January 1934. (As were Joseph Hannen and Howard MacNutt by now.)

January Gregory made plans of spending two months in Atlanta and one month in Nashville and this began to be called pioneering and “intensive teaching”.

February 22, 1934 Gregory spoke at Spelman College on the equality of women and men, and a brief summary in the "Chapel Notes" section was published in the Spelman Messenger. The end of the month he spoke at several at Church meetings. Early March Gregory spoke at a school (not Morehouse).

By April Gregory had spent time in Nashville and six to eight black women there joined the Faith through contact with him and together the black women and white women formed an assembly.

Gregory was in Cleveland May 15, and then spoke on "Light on the New World Order" in Lincoln Hall on May 20 at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

Gregory highlighted giving or presiding at several sessions. Abbott spoke to the delegates as well. - Consultation at the convention was extended beyond its original time and became a formal letter to assemblies to underscore the importance of the issue. However there was no progress to speak of.

Gregory talk at Alvin & Mrs Palmatier home on (357) Deforest St., Binghamton. (see 1940 Census and lived in same house in 1935 - this was actually his mother’s home but the whole family was living there then.)

Race amity conference at Green Acre; Portsmouth NH/Eliot Maine.

In September, Louise writes to Gregory not to be disturbed over employment issues and to continue his service and her money-providing means.

Gregory writes letter to Abbott as editor about event in Sept near Fisk about a controversy focusing on innocence of Thomas Jones about the incident, and whites at Fisk "of unusual caliber" who reflect qualities Gregory sees in the Baha'i Faith.

1935 trips

The Baha'is held a Race Amity meeting the week before Feb 2 with participation of Baha'is, especially Gregory, "who has made frequent trips to Denver". This was followed by the World Youth Fellowship Hour holding Race Relations Week starting Feb 3, before going on to Nashville Tennessee.

Feb 20 Gregory wrote a letter greatly admiring the marriage of Ali Kuli Khan and Florence Breed.

At the 1935 national convention there wasn’t a change in the energy level of race amity conferences. There was a national organization of Baha’i youth that inspired a national survey. This turned into a general survey of membership and was done circa 1936 which found around 99 blacks by some estimates (with no standardization of what counted as black so self—identifying.) “…the figures suggest that amity activity did not necessarily lead directly to increases in black membership but that it probably contributed to the creation of a climate favorable to the spread of the Faith among blacks.” but there was some correlation with Gregory’s period of service. The survey was communicated through assemblies and Memphis At­lanta, Louisville, Miami, Charleston, each lacked representation in the results.

If you go to the survey discussion above there is a sense that the black population responded to the Faith out of proportion to the whites in the relatively few states the Faith was present in to 1936, but even out of proportion it was still a tiny minority of the national Baha’i population. Additionally the Faith’s growth was under performing in the South and Great Plains. Some of the region includes the Confederacy down to the county level. Some have speculated a much wider breadth of black association with the Faith existed outside of contact with assemblies to which have access to the survey.

Gregory was not reappointed to the Amity Committee, but served in support of what the committee asked of him.

He did a lecture tour in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, "once to a class on race relations at the University of Toledo; in Lima to two black churches and a regularly scheduled weekly amity meeting sponsored by the Bahá’ís…; in Columbus and Cincinnati to four or five audiences each; in Dayton to groups at Wilberforce University five or six times and to the congregation of a Unitarian church; and in Cleveland to as many as five schools and clubs in one day …"

Gregory in week long series held at 222 North Scott St, South Bend, Indiana, the home of Nayan Hartfield thought that may have been a “Baha’i” name. Mable F. Hartfield was visible living there a few years before and when Baha’i meetings were being held. headed to Cleveland and Buffalo - had been in New York and Czechoslovakia. -> It’s still a private residence.

Aug 17-18 was the Green Acre Race Amity conference of which Gregory felt some satisfaction.

A niece, Lauretta Noisette Moore, became a Baha’i, uncertain date, maybe 1935. -> (mother born in Charleston SC, attended Avery) Appears to date Lauretta as a Baha’i back to 1935. Also calls Gregory her uncle. actually marries Cyril F. Turney (I cannot find her death, or any contact between her and Louise.) Gregory was noted among the lauded graduates of Fisk University.

1935-6 there was a national survey of the assemblies successes and troubles with race integration and activities in the country and many reported success without mention of any struggles, few actual committees, and asked for copies of Mariam Haney and Louis Gregory’s compilation The Oneness of Humanity and not infrequently taking the stance of not being an interracial movement but just appreciation of one race, that there was no such thing as race.

Sept 27 Howard Colby Ives and his wife Mabel Rice-Wray Ives wrote “Of all the souls in the Cause we know of none whose humble ser­vitude, tranquil power, and selfless teaching is so constant and so unassuming…”

Gregory talk at Teaneck Baha'i Center

Gregory talk at Brooklyn Center

"During the winter of 1935-36 he spent three months in New York and traveled extensively in Ohio and Indiana, participating in many amity activities although he was no longer a member of the national committee” including 36 talks in 30 days and part of a circuit of traveling speakers.

1936 trips

Gregory, a speaker in Cincinnati, "Can any Present Day Religion solve the World's Present Day problems?"

Gregory talks inc Wilberforce campus & Hotel Alma en route to Cincinnati late February.

Gregory is reported to have been on Wilberforce Campus.

Gregory had given a talk the previous Sunday for the Baha'is of Cincinnati on "Can any Present Day Religion solve the World's Present Day problems?"

Gregory guest of 'Nayan' Hartfield in South Bend, IN, two weeks of talks at Center, Pilgrim Baptist on Birdsell St., then off to Piney Woods, Mississippi.

Gregory was reported in Memphis, Tennessee, for a week of activities earlier April, recalling an earlier presence. His was a guest of George W. Henderson of the business college.

Gregory spoke twice at the University of Illinois at Urbana Student Center on "The Divine Art of Living" after mid-April. and then addressed the Alpha Kappa Delta sociology society at a dinner at the Woman's Building giving a talk "A Sociological Pioneer and the New South”. Gregory then spoke on "The New Psychology of Race" before the Baha's study group in the Student Center.

Mass picture published with summary of convention - talks by Dorothy Beecher Baker, Albert Windust, Montfort Mills, Louis Gregory (Mrs Gregory in Yugoslavia)

In May the Guardian announced the First Seven Year Plan of raising assemblies in every country of the Americas by 1944 with some extension into Europe. (There was a secondary goal of assemblies in every State in the US)

There was no race amity committee appointed apparently because the work tended to emphasize differences in some evaluation.

Gregory talk at Brooklyn Center: “Ancient Prophecies Fulfilled"

Gregory talk at Youth session at Green Acre Coverage of the Green Acre Race Amity Conference in later July was profiled noting speakers on Friday inc Horace Holley, Louis Gregory, and music by Evelyn Loveday. and on Sunday inc. Maxwell Miller of Boston, Mrs Biship Lewis of NY, Ludmilla Bechtold, with discussion overseen by Theodore C. A. McCardy and Martha Boutwell provided harp music.

Circa 1936 DuBoise broke with the NAACP but Gregory wrote with admiration of him as the ’third’ great leader of African Americans after Douglass and Washington.

Louise returned from Europe after or about the summer. By October they were planning on pioneering to Haiti as part of the Seven Year Plan.

In September Gregory wrote the Guardian about the situation of lacking a race amity conference and in November he wrote back affirming them and Gregory forwarded the letter to the NSA.

Gregory talk at Boston Baha'i Center, 218 Huntington Ave, on 'Why Man?”. The area has been renovated and seems to be a hotel now.

Reduced trips and appearances from 1937 - 1939

"They sailed from New York on 14 January 1937, bearing letters of introduction to some influential Haitians, and were soon settled in Petion Ville, a suburb of Port au Prince.” Gregory first visited Haiti in January 1937. Gregory had planned to be in Buffalo circa April.

Meanwhile the NSA set for regional meetings chose Nashville which was struggling over segregated and unified meetings which some saw as an opening to segregation in the Faith when the meetings met some approval but to be aimed towards eventually unified meetings. This became a topic at the national convention too. By October WEB DuBois announced his great disappointment to which Holley replied correcting misunderstandings.

Gregory was shocked at the poverty and division in society in Haiti between wealth and poverty. They initially projected three months but realized that would not be enough time but found more receptivity among the poor than educated classes.

They weren’t sure of their plans until they tried to hold a public meeting and began to run into administrative requirements ultimately denying them: "The Interior Secretary advised the Gregorys that authorization to hold public meetings was denied because the Department was formally opposed to the spread of the Baha'i Faith in Haiti.” The ban actually improved the interest of some and they hoped it was a temporary situation. Meanwhile they returned to the US in April. Three years later the Ellsworth returned and raised an assembly in April 1942.

Gregorys were in Port AU Prince.

Gregory missed the national convention - the first since 1911 - though he was thought on the program.

Apr 20, 1937, the Gregories left Kingston Jamaica and arrived at the New York Port on the 26th. They were then living at 421 Broadway, Cambridge, MA This remains a private address but appears to have been a building behind the main residence and is no longer present.

Gregory led the funeral service for Alfred E. Lunt mid-August 1937 in Beverly, MA. The entire NSA was present - an unprecedented service asked by Shoghi Effendi of the NSA.

Gregory traveled to Atlanta and twenty-six other places across seven months and then four months in Tuskegee. He arrived in Tuskegee Dec 1, 1937. Gregory spoke at the Tuskegee Institute study body in the chapel Dec 10. Gregory speaks to Tuskegee student body.

In Tuskegee, AL.

Gregory reported being given wide latitude while there and people adopted into several study groups and by April many wrote a letter to Shoghi Effendi and some officially declared. Though Tuskegee was a difficult circumstance it’s prestige was communicating his activity to other places.

Gregory gave three talks at the Baha'i Center at 530 E. Green St, Champaign, starting with "The Dependence of Man upon the Manifestation", then "Living in Two Worlds", and then "Haiti, the Deep South and the New World Order". It’s a commercial district area now though building might date back.

Gregory was the dinner guest and speaker at a reception by Lester Brown and Mr Pulley.

Summer of 1938 the Gregorys summered in Green Acre and wintered in Cambridge.

Following the Dec 1938 Advent of Divine Justice the NSA re-established the principle of unified public meetings which was followed by a post-convention process in 1939 about race unity meetings, reified conditions *of* the convention itself which had often been held in white suburbs of Chicago which many cafes refusing service too in Evanston while Wilmette was more open. However conditions were only incrementally improved even by 1950.

January 1939 he was sent to Pine Bluff Arkansas where he joined Lydia Martin (of the Cleveland Martins) to give presentations which was extended into a month starting with programs at the State Teacher’s College and extending into Churches, YM/YWCAs, schools and school conferences, PTAs, college classes and there was interest but a community did not materialize.

Gregory among public speakers for the national convention.

He was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly and continued until he resignation in 1946 for health reasons. He was usually also an recording secretary of the assembly though people still preferred him in the role of teaching though for six years he continued to be.

The NSA reappointed a race relations committee including Gregory and Dorothy Beecher Baker.

Gregory was among the presenters at the San Francisco World's Fair meeting.

"October 1939 a National Assembly meeting in San Fran­cisco enabled him to speak in the Bay Area; Southern California; Denver; Kansas City; Evansville, Indiana; West Virginia; and Philadelphia. He also visited Wilmington, Delaware, 'where he addressed the National Association for the Advancement of Col­ored People, and spoke for three firesides.’”

1940

Gregory talk at home of Robert L. & Mrs. Davis at 4321 Fourth St, Detroit -> the region was remodeled

Gregory joining conference at Temple gives talk in Windsor and Detroit.

Mrs. Gregory is in Eliot hosted by Mrs. Emmett Tooke.

Gregory talks in Teaneck as the Center on “The Oneness of Humanity”

The April 4th 1940 US Census has the family in Eliot, ME. Gregory was marked as the owner of the residence, living with George & Alice Romburg who were several years older than he. However in 1935 Gregory was marked living in Portsmouth while George and Alice were marked living in the same home. George was from West Virginia and Alice from Maine. Gregory described himself as a lecturer & teacher of a religious organization.

The NY Baha'i Center at 119 W 57th St held a monthly meeting this time with a piano program by Bruce Wendell. Stage actress Edna Thomas gave the opening talk on the Baha'i teachings. Charles McAllister sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". Suanders Aaron Peters of Lincoln University gave piano performances "A Nancy Story" and "Umbra". Mrs George Scott gave a talk of her trip to the Far East. Reginald Grant Barrow and Louis Gregory gave additional talks.

The monthly Baha'i Center meeting at 119 W. 57th St had Raphael Pumpelly introduced talks by Charles C. Weathers, NJ State Patrol Superintendent, and Louis Gregory.

Gregory among elected to National Assembly.

Gregory gave a talk "The Reality of Humanity" at the Baha'i Center of Beverley, MA.

“…spring of 1940, for example, he traveled west through New York state and on his return east made numerous stops; he spoke at a race unity dinner and gave a radio talk in Peoria, was featured in two lectures and a radio talk on May 11th, at ‘The Seventy-Five Years of Progress Exposition arranged by the colored citizens of Detroit, and visited Lima, Ohio, Dorothy Baker’s home community.”

In 1940 Gregory visited with two white Bahá’ís, Olga Finke and Doris Ebbert, in Atlanta renting space for a school but were abuptly told to vacate after Gregory spoke there.

Gregory among presenters at the July session at Green Acre, and who has moved from Portsmouth to Eliot, gives the talk "The Laws of Baha'u'llah".

Gregory wrote an article

Gregory was among the presenters at the first August session of Green Acre on "Racial Unity". and among the Youth Conference at the second session.

Gregory was among the National Assembly members that met at Green Acre and attended meetings of the school.

He’s also part of lecture series at Milwaukee Baha'i Center at 744 N. 4th St. -> today that is 744 Vel R. Phillips Ave, which is the Springhill Suites commercial building.

About 1940 the NSA established a ’southern college project’ and Gregory was not attending every meeting of the Race Unity Committee but was active on the talk circuit along with Dorothy Baker.

At the end of November, Gregory was in Eliot Maine speaking to the Booker T. Washington High School faculty. He had been in Baltimore recently at speaking at the Baltimore Hotel with "grand daughter of Henry Ward Beecher" also spoke (Dorothy Baker? Mother Beecher?) and was about to set off on a journey across regions. In November 1940 the NSA met in Atlanta and took on the segregation of Baha’is there. Indeed Gregory, the first to arrive, found only part of the community willing to meet with him but when Dorothy made the request with Gregory everyone came but at a further meeting some whites left. This was followed by several public and private meetings, all integrated. "Louis Gregory spoke in Geor­gia and the Carolinas, while Dorothy Baker followed the long path he had trod alone for so many years. From Fisk in Nashville she journeyed to the Ftenderson Business College in Memphis, to Tuskegee Institute, and to the state of Florida, visiting a total of thirty colleges.”

"As convention reporter from 1940 through 1944, Louis Gregory helped to shape the American Bahà’i community’s general con­sciousness of its annual conventions.” though "no conven­tion report was published for 1945, and the 1946 report did not mention race unity"

1941

"In 1941-42, under the committee’s auspices, Dorothy Baker lectured in nearly fifty colleges— white, black, and Indian. Louis Gregory’s circuit in March and April 1942 took him through West Virginia, Virginia, and the Carolinas; he also visited Ohio, Michi­gan, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C."

Gregory scheduled to speak at the Lima Baha’i Center in January but took place in February in the Hotel Argonne's Crystal Room 1941 on "The Races, One or Many”. There had been a regional conference earlier in the day. it is a hotel and it has that room -> a place that still stands

Gregory speaker at Brotherhood Week of Abraham Lincoln Birthday "Man's Finding a Lost Treasure” in Kenosha.

Gregory talk at Melvin & Mrs Nein home at 808 Huffman Ave -> (it’s now half a house)

Gregory talk at Odd Fellows Hall in Urbana, IL in early March followed by a black child Cub Scout troup.

Gregory spoke at Baha'i regional conference hosted at YMCA in Dayton.

Baha'i Race Unity Committee members speak; L. W. Schurgast, Dorothy Baker, Louis Gregory and Gregory co-presented with Dorothy Baker at Liberal Savings Building at 24 E. Sixth St. His talk was "The Racial Basis of the New Civilization”. Today it is a set of apartments - The Lofts at Graydon.

Cincinnati Baha'i Assembly hosts Race unity program with talk by Dorothy Beecher Baker and Louis Gregory.

Again, Gregory and Dorothy Baker gave talks at the Liberal Savings Bldg in Cincinnati for the assembly.

Gregory spoke at the Kalantar home at 3100 Monroe St amidst series. -> house is still there

Gregory to go to the national convention.

In April Gregory assisted in the election of Memphis’ first spiritual assembly by bringing the white and colored together.

He was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly.

Gregory offered a study class entitled 'Racial Basis of a New Civilization” at Green Acre during youth session

Gregory among Feast talks on “Might”.

Gregory gave a testimonial at the Elizabeth Greenleaf funeral held at Green Acre.

Gregory visits Kenosha Baha'i Center at 5912 Twenty-Second Ave honoring the Birthday of Lincoln with "The New Emancipation” talk followed a couple weeks later at the Racine Baha’i Center. and stopped at the Lima Baha'i Center to give a talk "The Light of Unity" (said to be of Boston.) and at the DAR Chapter House at 824 N. Pennsylvania St. and at the Portsmouth Baha'i Center at 2108 Kinzie Ave on "The Common Outlook of Religion and Science". today it is a tax service

Gregory spoke at the Hallie Q. Brown Community House Dec 7 and noted the Green Acre Race Amity Conference in Aug 1941, and recalled his visit in 1921 and had just come from a Race-Unity Conference in Indianapolis, IN.

and then the Phyllis Wheatley House in Minneapolis, radio WLOL and WDGY and at Dychman Hotel

Spoke at the St James AME Church at the 8pm service on “The Love of God and the Brotherhood of Man”.

As a kind of prelude to the next entries of Gregory in Michigan, Mrs. Annie B. Romer of New York was a guest of Mrs. Melba D. Mebane and gave a presentation on the Baha'i Faith at Idlewild to a meeting of ladies which was then summarized at some length in a newspaper article.

1942

Gregory talks the YWCA buildings in Detroit and Flint across a period of weeks.

Gregory was a guest of Mrs. L. D. Thompson at Idlewild and had been on radio WMBC for the Interracial Goodwill Hour. He then spoke at the Tabernacle AME Church. Thompson had started a Baha’i study group along with sister Esther Benjamin that was offered by Clara and Cora Edge of Grand Rapids. Esther Benjamin died in Idlewild in 1977, and Mrs L. D. Thompson was Helen A. Thompson who died in Idlewild in 1978 and at least in 1935-1940 the sisters and their husbands lived in the same house. The Edge sisters appear often in Baha’i News and other periodicals.

Gregory gives a series of talk in Ludington MI at the homes of Clarence Wilder, Everett Dumas, and an elementary school and Pentwater High School.

Gregory was among the presenters at the Urbana-Champagin Race Amity conference on March 1 at the Champaign City building Council room.

He was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly. During the 1940s he also served as a member of the Green Acre school committee for several years and often presented classes in addition to his work with the Race Amity conferences usually held at Green Acre. Sometimes he handled publicity for the school or specifically taught children’s classes. He also served as an editorial committee member for Baha’i News.

"In 1942-43 a separate College Foundation Committee (later known as the Bahà’i College Speakers Bureau) was appointed. Working closely with the Race Unity Committee, it utilized the speaking talents of Dorothy Baker, Louis Gregory, Joy Hill Earl, and others. Mrs. Baker concentrated on the Southwest, touring six states and lecturing in twenty-seven schools. That winter and the next Louis Gregory traveled through Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Following a com­mittee directive approved by the National Assembly, he spoke di­ rectly on the Faith in black colleges and in white schools presented by the Miami Baha'is. It was probably the first in the South. The committee sponsored bimonthly meetings in both white and black neighborhoods and general interracial meetings of the community."

Gregory back to Eliot from national convention and gave a report

Gregory talks at first Green Acre session on Islam

Gregory among presenters at Green Acre Race Amity Conference

Feast held at Mrs Gregory home (Louis is away or just not named?)

"In 1942-43 he made his way through New York, Michigan, Ohio, and six Southern states.”

Gregory gave a talk and study class in Springfield, and then co-presents at Brooklyn Center: "Progress Toward a New World Order"

Gregory talk at Center at 4 Congdon Pl, Binghamton: "America's Destiny" -> now a bank

1943

Gregory returned to talk at Melvin & Mrs Nein home, will visit Wilberforce University and the Cincinnati regional conference. Listed as a Baha’i The private residence appears to still be there (925 Cottage Dr)

Gregory gave a talk in DC in early February.

March 1943 Gregory was in New Orleans and addressed his understanding of the 1937 Nashville Incident.

He was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly.

Gregory and negro spirituals among testimonials for Sarah Farmer at Green Acre

Gregory speaker at Race Amity Conference at Green Acre.

"Louis Gregory in Flint, Michigan; Kenosha and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Cleveland, Ohio,”

Mid-September Gregory was part of the Milwaukee program on race unity along with Dorothy Baker. A week later he also spoke at the Kenosha Baha'i Center with John Haggard on race unity. Then at the end of September Gregory gave a talk at the YMCA in Flint Michigan amidst a series of meetings hosted at various homes: Eugene Peters, 4051 Grant St, Ralph Garner, 406 1/2 E. Court St., or Cynthia Rather at 601 E. Ninth St, and then at the YMCA. 4051 Grant St take over by business parking lot, 406 1/2 E. Court St. might too, 601 E. Ninth St. part of highway system now. In early October, Gregory made an appearance in Ypsilanti. Late in October, Gregory was in .

"1943-44, Louis Gregory journeyed from New England to Texas, stopping in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas.”

In mid-October, Gregory appeared in Grand Rapids, and then Detroit for a talk.

Gregory talk on race unity at (‘the’) YWCA in Akron Ohio

Gregory talk at Center 206 E. University Ave, Cincinnati & in Dayton at YWCA While in town he donated. copy of Race and Man for review of the local The Dayton Forum.

There was a race riot in June 1943 The NSA set a two month plan at the end of 1943 of national race amity meetings.

Gregory talk in South Bend Baha’i Center Lafayette #210

1944 trips

Jan 1944 the NSA wrote in support of President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 Gregory was profiled about to gave talks in Oklahoma.

In March he spoke at the Unity Center on Bridge St in Springfield, MA.

Gregory talk at Baha'i Center at Hotel Latchis Annex on Flat St in Brattleboro, VT

Elected to National Assembly

Gregory was among the presenters at Green Acre on "Search for Reality in Past Holy Books"

Gregory contributed to Race Amity Conference at Green Acre with the talk "Light and Shadows on the Inner and Outer Plane”

Gregory contributed to the late summer session at Green Acre

Mrs Gregory hosted a meeting at the Brattleboro Center

"1944 and early 1945 Mr. Gregory… visiting Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York state.… Louise Gregory … spent the winter months in Brattleboro, Vermont{{rp|p301}

From 1945 to 1948

He was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly 1945 and 1946.

Circa November 1945 Gregory was among the traveling speakers at a study class in Brattleboro, VT.

Gregory talk at Baha'i Center in Lima, OH, on "The Most Great Peace" and profiled - notes religion had been banned under Nazi Germany.

In March 1946 Gregory spoke at the home of W. H & Mrs Alexander, 805 Innisfallen Ave, Springfield Still a private home (perhaps replaced structure)

In later 1946 there was a proposed consultative meeting of the NSA, the Race Unity Committee, and representatives from the National Teaching Committee, Regional Committees, and Assembly members from the South. It is unclear if it was held. Instead of an initiative, at the 1947 national convention the Race Unity Committee was subsumed into the National Teaching Committee though this again resulted in decreased activities which was brought up again from Shoghi Effendi in 1953 with the talk presented by Dorothy Baker on his behalf at the national convention and the committee re-appointed, and again commented on in 1957.

During 1945 was his first bout of serious illness.

During 1946-7 he retired from the NSA for health reasons.

1948 Gregory wrote about the Dargan family and received a reply from kin George Dargan February 8, 1949, including a family tree which included his grandfather as a judge, lawyers and doctors. Gregory tried to reply in good spirits of his views on race and George Dargan’s reply was race relations in the South had been badly damaged by interference because of the Civil War.

"Gregory’s only major trip during this time occurred in October 1948, when he flew to Kansas City to assist at the funeral of his old friend, Dr. Thomas C. Chapman, fulfilling a promise he had once made.… ‘…the first long one that I have ever made by air.’ ”(And a friend stayed with Louise in Eliot to look after her.)

Notes major denominations on stances of race and small groups having very distinguished stances on race, it's Temple, Negroes at national levels of service - Elsie Austin and Louis Gregory.

In December 1948 he suffered a stroke and recovered enough to go home in January but having lost some of his memory.

1949 - 1951 in Green Acre area

Gregorys attend Ayyam-i-Ha & Feast at Reimer home (start of Fast)

By summer 1949 he was writing long letters again after the stroke and began a broad correspondence.

Green Acre School was closed 1949-1950 as an austerity move to finish the Temple. The Gregory’s were relatively isolated.

By May 1950 Gregory wrote that Louise was “quite frail in body” though she would outlive him.

Gregory wrote a letter to the editor of Negro Digest of his appreciation of the mention of the religion in the September and December editions and broadly of the capacity and reach of the religion.

Late summer 1950 Gregory organizing meetings at Green Acre area.

Gregory talk in series entitled "The station of Woman in the New Cycle of the Day of God" at Green Acre

Mrs. Gregory (at least) was back from pilgrimage and co-presented a talk of her trip in Eliot.

letter to editor by Gregory, recalls being in Europe, etc. He attended an opera in Paris for "Faust" production after the Franco-German War (1870)

Green Acre Baha’i School reopened the summer of 1951.

Gregory aided in the funeral of Emma Jane Thompson

Died and memorialized

He died July 30, 1951 after 2 days at Portsmouth Hospital on Maine Street. He was described as a lecturer and attorney for the Bahai Faith by his wife Mrs Louise Alice Gregory. He died of colon cancer, had been diagnosed with 6 years previous(~1945), and aggravated by arteriosclerosis and "mental deterioration”. He was buried Aug 1, 1951 in Mt Pleasant Cemetery, Eliot ME.

Named a posthumous Hand of the Cause.

died, funeral, memorials

A national memorial service for Gregory was held end of November, 1951. Among the attendees were Mrs. Jacob Kunz, Cliford & Mrs Jones. Dorothy Baker was the master of ceremoy at the memorial service. Including talks by Harlan Ober, Joy Earl, and Dorothy Baker.

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