Lex Musta tells the interracial story of how the January 20th 1955 first-in-the-nation student-led sit-in integration of a lunch counter came about (6:00), led by Dr. Helen Hicks in Baltimore from Morgan State University. It was facilitated by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) activity in Baltimore founded by Dr. Herbert Kelman and Robert Watts in 1952, an interracial coalition which laid the ground work for the national student-led sit-in movement six years before Greensboro (7:10). In 1953 CORE integrates (Kresge) KMart lunch counters in Baltimore (8:15). In 1953 CORE integrates Woolworth lunch counters in Baltimore (9:37). In 1954 CORE integrates McCrory's and Grant's lunch counters in Baltimore with sit-ins, one year before 1955 first-in-nation student sit-ins (9:55). 1954 Read's Drug Store integrated by CORE's Robert Watts and his Morgan State Students and their 8 month sit-in, leading up to Dr. Helen Hicks led sit in (10:14). 1946-1952 NAACP integration of Ford's Theater with the participation of a 13 year old Helen Hicks, led by Adah Jenkins Baltimore Interracial Fellowship, Professor of Music at Morgan State and Charter Member of CORE. Leading actors Basil Rathbone and Edward Robinson boycotted Ford as a result. Dr. Lilly Jackson joined this protest leading to Franz Lehar's 'The Merry Widow' being the first desegregated play perform. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considers every American to be proud of the Jackson family's contributions to Civil Rights (13:40). 1932 Juanita Jackson desegregated her dormitory in Pennsylvania after being denied schooling in Baltimore. Thurgood Marshall also integrated a movie theater in Pennsylvania after being denied schooling in Baltimore. Thurgood Marshall and Juanita Jackson founded and led Baltimore's City Wide Young People's Forum in 1931. The youth started the program: "No employment, No Business." The Forum was based at the Bethel AME Church in Baltimore. The daughter activated her mother Dr. Lilly Jackson to become the President of the NAACP supported financially by her father Keifer Jackson who popularized films with showings of positive portrayals of African Descent Americans (18:50). Juanita Jackson helped Lieutenant Violet Hill Whyte, become the first ever African Descent American Police Officer in Baltimore in 1937, the daughter of the Pastor of Bethel AME Church Daniel Hill (21:14). Juanita Jackson, following the murder of 9 African Americans by Baltimore Policemen from 1937-1942, and Pvt. Broadus being gunned down for hailing a non-licensed cab, she organized 150 Baltimore Organizations into a Citizen's Committee for Justice to form a 2000 person caravan of busses and cars to travel the 25 miles to Annapolis to meet with the Governor Herbert O'Conor and demand change on April 24, 1942 (21:45). The Bethel AME Church leadership in Baltimore Social Change work was established in 1785 with its first official pastor Rev. Daniel Coker penning the first African Descent American written anti-enslavement Tract in 1810, the Dialogue between a Virginian and an African minister (26:54). Mr. Church member Charles Hacket, a conductor on the underground railroad, led three years of indignation meetings (prayer and fasting for 24 hours in the church for change) to defeat 1860 bill to enslave all 100,000 African descent freemen in Maryland. (23:44). In 1863 Hacket recruited two United States Colored Troop regiments in Baltimore, the 4th Regiment in September and the 7th Regiment. December 5-8 1879 Indignation Meetings held to hire first African Descent teacher, Roberta Sheridan, in Baltimore public schools since 1865 when they were all fired. In 1885, Rev. Harvey Johnson founded the Order of the Regulators - a civil rights advocacy organization. My daughter asked for a prayerful interlude, and we sing the Song of the Prophets (25:41). Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall, with the support of Alpha Phi Alpha, integrated UMD law school with the case of Donald Gaines Murray.

Other Tradition

Episode 5: The Other Tradition and Maryland Civil Rights

Lex Musta tells the story of how Barbara Talley's Fourth Great Grandfather had a son Benjamin in 1787 in Dorchester County who would be manumitted from enslavement when he turned 45 and saved to liberate his wife from her concentration camp as well. He then became a station master on the interracial underground railroad. After helping with the escape of the "Dover Eight," Benjamin's daughter Harriet Tubman came to liberate her at-risk parents in 1857, reaching William Still's station with them in June of that year. They reached Freedom North in St. Catherine's, before moving to the famous Harriet Tubman home in Auburn, New York in 1859. Benjamin's six year younger brother Dani who helped with Harriet's escapes from Baltimore (20:05). Dani's son John T. Ross moved back to St. Michaels before the end of the war (29:30). His son Frank Ross continued to live in his father's house in St. Michaels since his birth in 1857 (29:40). His son Percy Ross was born on the 12th of June in 1902 in St. Michaels (30:05). In 1940 he was working on Alghman Farm on Route 1 for 84 hrs/week, 50 weeks of the year to help raise his daughter Dorothy Naomi Ross who had been born on the 4th of January in 1930 (30:40). Dorothy was the mother of Barbara Talley Ross who was born on the 19th of September 1954 and became a champion of Race Amity in America (30:55).

Episode 4: The Other Tradition and Harriet Tubman's Fifth Cousin

Lex Musta tells the story of how Charlotte Emily Brittingham Dixon received a three month sanctification in Princess Anne, MD in 1896 (3:15), and went to Chicago in search of the Manifestation of God she felt certain was upon the earth (5:10), she found Him in the person of Baha'u'llah and returned to the Southern United States to establish the DC Baha'i Community in 1898 (10:35), she was soon joined by Laura Barney in 1902 who invited over the greatest Baha'i Philosopher of the time Mirza Abu'l Fad'l to write the book Baha'i Proofs and teach the young community its new Faith (16:25), Pauline Hannen consequently adopted the Faith and began to share it with DC's African American community (18:25), the well known spiritual wife of the Rev. John W. Pope, Pocahontas, whose husband comes from the richest African American family in North Carolina, became the first African American in DC to adopt the Faith in 1907 (27:30), the first of those liberated from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello concentration camp in 1865 to receive a college education and noted suffragist, Mrs. Coralie Cook, was a cousin of Pocahontas' husband, and adopted the Faith in 1910. She then taught her Employer, the most successful African American Female Entrepreneur in town and a national leader of African American music, Mrs. Harriet Gibbs Marshall. She provided her Washington Conservatory of Music at 902 T Street, NW for use as the first African American owned Baha'i Center in America (30:45). Together these women formed the first Integrated Baha'i Community in America when they all gathered in an integrated fashion for their monthly meeting at Pauline's sister Fanny's house in April of 1910.

Episode 3: The Multiracial DC Women Who Created the First Integrated Baha'i Community in America

We tell the story of how Carrie Minor Johnson grew up in Washington DC where the Other Tradition saved her and the city from the Racial Pogrom of 1919: Carrie Minor Johnson's Childhood on G Street (3:06), First Integrated US Baha'i Gathering on G Street in 1910 (4:36), 1919 DC Racial Pogrom reaches Carrie Minor Johnson (5:25), African American Carrie Minor Johnson partners with European American Federal Judge Siddons to be save her life (8:25), The DC Baha'i Community's 110 year experience with the Other Tradition (9:38), Mr. Louis George Gregory exemplar of the Other Tradition (14:39), The DC Baha'i Community responds to the 1919 Racial Pogrom (20:02).

Episode 2: The 1919 DC Racial Pogrom and The Other Tradition

Lex Musta recalls his introduction to 'The Other Tradition' by Dr. Richard Thomas in 2012, Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (3:50), Focus Hope (7:30), Detroit Interracial Cooperation after 1943 and 1967 Pogroms (8:45), Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress published by the Association for Baha'i Studies in 1993 (11:15), Understanding Interracial Unity: A Study of U.S. Race Relations published in the SAGE series on Race and Ethnic Relations in 1995 (11:30), Black and Jewish Faculty on College Campuses and Minister Farrakhan (15:00), Grimke Sisters (17:00), Bacon's Rebellion (20:00), Revolutionary War (23:15), John Brown meets Frederick Douglass (27:00), USCT (31:15), Knights of Labor (31:30), Reconstruction (32:00), NAACP (32:45), Northern Migration (34:30), Herbert Aptheker (37:00), Congress of Industrial Organizations (37:30), Highlander Folk School (38:15), Southern Conference for Human Welfare (38:30), Southern Conference Educational Fund (38:45), Howard Thurman (40:30), Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (40:45), Baha'i Civil Rights Work in 1964 (44:15).

Episode 1: Dr. Richard Thomas Introduces The Other Tradition

In his 1993 book Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress, Dr. Richard Thomas, professor emeritus of history at Michigan State University, pioneers the race relations concept of the “other tradition,” which explains that the lasting advances in American race relations are the result of close, multiracial collaboration. Dr. Richard Thomas and Lex Musta use this podcast to further explore the other tradition to encourage our listeners to work for progress in race relations multiracially.

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Other Tradition

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