Over 140 years in Boston

1884 to 1912

Early History

The Baha'i Faith in Boston began in 1884 when 21-year-old Kate Cowan Ives became a believer. Born in Newfoundland, Canada, Kate dedicated her life to promoting Baha'u'llah's teachings, traveling between Boston and Green Acre in Eliot, Maine, where interested Bostonians explored this new religion.

The country anticipated the new century with hope. Boston was a growing center of business and education with a changing skyline. People eagerly explored new ideas, fought social wrongs, and promoted American ideals. Baha'i teachings addressed these yearnings with concepts including the oneness of humanity, the unity of religion, and the search for spiritual truth.

The Boston community's growth was tied to Green Acre Inn, founded by Sarah Farmer. This nature-surrounded retreat offered freethinkers, religionists, and people of all backgrounds a space to learn and strengthen ties of universal love.

By 1899, the Boston Baha'i community stretched from Worcester through Cape Cod to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They held regular meetings and elected their first governing board in 1908. Beyond home-based study meetings, they rented spaces throughout the city until 1919 when a twelve-room Charles Street house accommodated the growing community. Public meetings and presentations occurred frequently. Local newspapers published ads and articles attracting people to the Faith.

1920s

Race Unity Work

The oneness of humanity is the central teaching of the Baha'i Faith, and race unity was one of the community's most pressing challenges in America. Abdu'l-Baha had encouraged interracial marriage and initiated race unity conferences. Green Acre saw itself as a center where all faiths, cultures, and races could come together. Shoghi Effendi, head of the Faith after Abdu'l-Baha, identified racism as America's most vital and challenging issue.

But the Boston community lacked a unified understanding of how to bring together Black and white peoples until Mrs. Sadie Oglesby returned from her 1924 pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she had direct conversations with Shoghi Effendi.

After returning home, Sadie spoke on race unity in Boston and nationally. She spoke extensively at the National Convention for U.S. and Canadian Baha'is, relaying Shoghi Effendi's words: "The peace and tranquility of the world depend on racial harmony." Convention attendees were so stirred they committed to spreading her message.

For ten years, Sadie devoted herself to race unity work. Shoghi Effendi wrote of her efforts: "Your constancy and zeal are assets that I greatly value." And: "Persevere with unfaltering faith."

Sadie shared that while the community had been somewhat diverse when she and her husband Mabrey became Baha'is, that changed over time. Often only she and Mabrey attended as people of color. Shoghi Effendi's instructions were direct: "My charge to you is that when you go back to America tell the friends to look within themselves and find the reason for so few colored people being in the Cause. Until this is removed, the Cause cannot grow. This is vital."

Sadie said she and Mabrey became and remained Baha'is only because they found no flaws in their spiritual teachers, Harland and Grace Ober. "If it had been that I found them off duty once, we would have turned our faces in another direction; we were guilty of looking for shortcomings, but we have never seen them off duty with us, or with anybody else, at any time. If they had not remained in Boston until my husband and myself were strong enough to turn our eyes towards God, I assure you, dear souls, we still would have been looking in the dark."

Ten years after her pilgrimage, the Boston Baha'i community was integrated with a large proportion of people of color, largely through Sadie's work.