This symposium about local Bahá’í history will highlight the study of the Nashville and Lansing Bahá’í communities and will explore ways to collect oral history. Dr. Robert Stockman, Wilmette Institute Director, will serve as host and moderator. Each 20-minute presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.
The Nashville Bahá’í Community: A Legacy of Unity
Panelist: Joyce Jackson
Slide Show: The Nashville Bahá’í Community: A Legacy of Unity (PDF)
We’ll take a brief look at the Bahá’í community of Nashville Tennessee, focusing on its formative years and its legacy of race unity.
Moments in Bahá’í History of Lansing, MI
Panelist: Burton Smith
Slide Show: Moments in History of Bahá’í Faith in Lansing, Michigan (PDF)
This presentation will cover the moments of Bahá’í History found through Archival documents, letters, and photos in Archives and Newspapers. Some personal accounts are included.
The Oklahoma Bahá’í Oral History Project
Panelist: Mark Vaccaro
Slide Show: The Oklahoma Bahá’í Oral History Project (PDF)
The Oklahoma Bahá’í Oral History Project began in 2004 as a collaborative initiative of Mark Vaccaro and Alex Resnick. Its purpose is to record on video the stories of service of Bahá’ís who currently live in Oklahoma or who previously lived in Oklahoma. This presentation explores the origins of the project and the techniques that were developed to interview the Bahá’ís, record the videos, edit them and present them in an acceptable format to the National Bahá’í Archives for the benefit of future Bahá’í historians. The focus of the presentation is not on the actual history of the Bahá’í Faith in Oklahoma. Rather it is on how we do what we do so that others will see how relatively easy it is to do the same thing to document the growth and development of the Faith in their own communities.