The Bahá'í Faith and the Black Intelligentsia:

Abstract: This book by Christopher Buck represents years of pioneering and groundbreaking research in several scholarly fields, particularly, African American history and Bahá’í history. Each of the eight chapters explores and excavates historical gems that have laid hidden, or were largely ignored by some traditional scholars. . . .

For those readers who have followed the remarkable scholarly journey of Christopher Buck into what was until recently an uncharted field of African American Bahá’í history, this book of previously published works represents a major contribution to the evolving field of African American Bahá’í history. For close to twenty-five years... Buck has continued to contribute to the still fledgling field.... As he points out in his chapter, “The Bahá’í Race Amity Movement and the Black Intelligentsia in Jim Crow America: Alain Locke and Robert S. Abbott”: “Notwithstanding the absence of a definitive history of African American Bahá’ís, important work has been done on the ‘Race Amity’ movement, which is surely the most significant aspect of African American Bahá’í history during the Jim Crow era . . . .” There can be no doubt that this book will contribute to that eventual “definitive history of African American Bahá’ís.” – From the Introduction, by Richard W. Thomas