Learn how you can visit Gregory’s home that serves as a memorial to the religious and social justice leader
Episcopalians, Catholics, Jews, African American Methodists, Muslims, Presbyterians, and Baptists, as well as those of many other faiths, are all part of the religious mix of worshippers—many with historic roots—in the Holy City. But how many know of Charleston’s tie to the Bahá'í faith—or the significant contributions to it by Louis George Gregory?
Born here on June 6, 1874, to parents who were formerly enslaved, Gregory attended the Avery Institute, earned a law degree from Howard University, and practiced in Washington, DC, where he became acquainted with the religion that originated in the Middle East in the 19th century.
It was not only that the faith embraced the oneness of humanity and most of the major religious prophets that intrigued him. It was also that he, a Black man, was accepted in an integrated congregation that roused his interest and triggered his rise in the religion’s hierarchy, an option not open in other faiths in a segregated society.
Gregory went on missionary treks throughout the South, including Charleston, converting people to the religion, as well as pilgrimages to Palestine, Egypt, and other countries, where the leaders he met emphasized the oneness of the divinity, as well as all of humanity. This was a powerful message to many at the time, including Gregory, who had witnessed the lynching of his grandfather when he was seven.
In 1912, Gregory was elected to the national Bahá'í executive board and became the first African American to serve in the National Spiritual Assembly of the US and Canada a decade later. He proselytized throughout Central and South America and worked to spread the idea of racial and religious harmony for decades throughout this country, associating with the likes of Harlem Renaissance leader Alain Locke and local Federal Judge J. Waties Waring.
After his death in Maine on July 30, 1951, Gregory was appointed a Hand of the Cause, the highest-ranking position in the faith responsible for protecting and spreading the religion. The seven million or so worshippers around the world owe a lot to Gregory, whose former house at 2 Desportes Court, open by appointment, stands as a memorial to him and his vision of God and a unified humanity.
