'Abdu'l-Bahá at Howard University

On 23 April 1912, three days after He reached Washington, D.C., ‘Abdu’l-Bahá went to Howard University, founded in 1867 and by 1912 one of the foremost Black universities in the country. Mírzá Maḥmúd recorded that the hosts, most of them Black with a few whites, had arranged for Him to be welcomed with music from a band while the audience applauded, and that the president of the university introduced Him as the Prophet of Peace and the harbinger of unity and salvation. The historian Allan Ward notes that well over a thousand students, faculty, administrators and guests filled Rankin Chapel.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá began:

Today I am most happy, for I see here a gathering of the servants of God. I see white and black sitting together. There are no whites and blacks before God. All colors are one, and that is the color of servitude to God.

Scent and color, He said, are not important; the heart is important.

God does not look at colors; He looks at the hearts.

In the vegetable kingdom, He said, the colors of many flowers are not a cause of discord but the adornment of the garden, and "the world of humanity, too, is like a garden, and humankind are like the many-colored flowers." Doves of many colors live in utmost harmony; white doves fly with black ones. If animals, which lack reason, do not make color a cause of conflict, why should man? White and black, He reminded them, are descendants of the same Adam; the colors developed later, due to climates and regions, and "have no significance whatsoever."

He spoke too of emancipation: how the proclamation of freedom in America had been followed in other lands. He asked His Black hearers to be grateful to the whites of America who had fought for their freedom, and the whites to be very loving toward them, so that they might progress together and "mix together completely." His hope was that the very names of black and white would vanish: "All shall be called human, just as the name for a flight of doves is dove."

Maḥmúd records that the audience applauded Him again and again, and that as He left the hall, people lined both sides of His way to show their respect. Joseph Hannen wrote in Star of the West that here, "as everywhere when both white and colored people were present," ‘Abdu’l-Bahá seemed happiest.

A retelling based on The Promulgation of Universal Peace ('Abdu'l-Bahá), talk of 23 April 1912 at Howard University, Washington, D.C. (translated by Amin Banani), with details from Mahmúd's Diary (23 April 1912, with its editorial notes). For the fuller account, see the originals.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1922). *The Promulgation of Universal Peace*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/promulgation-universal-peace/