A conversation with Dr. Richard Thomas on his recently published book chapter “How the Bahá’í Teachings on Racial Unity Influenced My Academic Focus on Race Relations in the United States.”
The Bahá’í Faith and African American Studies: Perspectives on Racial Justice, edited by Loni Bramson and Layli Maparyan – Contributions by Layli Maparyan; Richard Hollinger; June Thomas; Richard W. Thomas; Loni Bramson; Michael McMullen and Gwen Etter-Lewis
Richard W. Thomas, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of History at Michigan State University, where he taught courses on the black urban experience, comparative black history, and U.S. race relations. He has lectured on race relations and the black experience in England, Switzerland, Ireland, Australia, Israel, and South Africa. His books include: Life for Us is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945 (Indiana Univ. Press); Understanding Interracial Unity: A Study of U. S. Race Relations (Sage Publications); and co-edited with Gwen Etter-Lewis, Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’ís in North America, 1898-2000. In 1993 he received the Gustavus Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America for his book, Understanding Interracial Unity. In 1995 he received the Wesley-Logan Prize by the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History for his book Life for Us is What We Make It. The book by Joe Darden and Richard W. Thomas, Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide (Michigan State Univ. Press, 2013), was named a Michigan Notable Book for 2013 and winner of a 2014 State History Award by the Historical Society of Michigan. He co-authored with William H. Smith Race Amity: America’s Other Tradition, A Primer (2019), and he is co-author with Fred Landry of Anchor of Faith: The Enduring Spirit of the Black Men’s Gathering (Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 2022). A recent chapter summarizing his career as a race unity worker appears in the edited book The Bahá’í Faith and African American Studies (Lexington Books, 2023). Thomas was one of the original twelve men who formed the Bahá’í Men’s Gathering in 1987, and he is a member of the Ann Arbor MI Bahá’í community. He and his wife June have two children and four grandchildren.
