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Winter 1982-83

World Order

When the Incredible

Must Be Believed

A Congressional Resolution:

Protesting Iran’s Bigotry

We Can Solve Urban Problems

Alexander Garvin

Bringing Up Baby Bilingual

Jane Merrill Filstrup

Some Reflections on Racial Unity

Nosratollah Rassekh

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World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 17, NUMBER 2 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

Consultant in Poetry:

WILLIAM STAFFORD

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091. Application to Mail at Second-class postage rates is pending at Wilmette, IL. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WORLD ORDER, 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, IL 60091.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription rates: USA, 1 year, $10.00; 2 years, $18.00; single copies, $3.00. All other countries, 1 year, $12.00; 2 years, $22.00; single copies $3.00.

Copyright © 1983, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, All Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 When the Incredible Must Be Believed: Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 A Congressional Resolution: Protesting Iran’s

Bigotry

16 Walk with the One

poem by Greg Brown

16 Lost Children

poem by Craig Loehle

17 Bringing Up Baby Bilingual

by Jane Merrill Filstrup

30 The House

poem by Jocelyn Boor

31 We Can Solve Urban Problems

by Alexander Garvin

43 Some Reflections on Racial Unity

book review by Nosratollah Rassekh

Inside back cover: Authors & Artists in This Issue

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When the Incredible Must Be Believed

WHAT MORE can be said about martyrdom? What bears repeating—or requires it? When the incredible takes place day after day, something must give—either the facts or one’s standards of credibility. But the facts won’t go away. The joyful peace that descends upon the Bahá’í martyrs and their families at the moment of truth tells us that martyrdom is more than the material fact of suffering torture and death for one’s convictions; part of its definition must be the state of mind or soul that makes martyrdom recognizable and possible. This special grace comes to “ordinary” people who had been as subject to worry, fear, tension, anxiety as anyone else. A Bahá’í who has not faced this supreme test finds it perhaps not as incredible as would his average, religiously unawakened neighbor; but, with the heroism of these martyrs filling his consciousness, he finds it in himself to wonder how he would bear the torture and the killing undergone by his Iranian coreligionists. Such self-doubts are allayed by the clear evidence that these “ordinary” people are bathed in a power that makes pain irrelevant or perhaps even unfelt and infuses them with joy and energy that must come from their belief in a glorious future. This is not the end! Their own words testify to their happy anticipation of being reunited with relatives and friends who have preceded them on this road. That much we mere mortals can glimpse. As for the greater joy, that of being united With God, the understanding of it is probably reserved to those who have been allowed, by their love and merit, to stand, before death, at the opening gates.

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Interchange LETFERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

AS EDITORS, we are always happy to see articles first published in our magazine achieve a wider circulation and readership than is possible among our subscribers. This has happened a number of times when essays from WORLD ORDER have been reprinted as pamphlets. Daniel C. Jordan’s “Becoming Your True Self” (Fall 1968) and “In Search of the Supreme Talisman” (Fall 1970), S. P. Raman’s “My Quest for the Fulfillment of Hinduism” (Spring 1969), Firuz Kazemzadeh’s commentary on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet to the Hague (Winter 1969-70), and Constance Conrader’s “Women: Attaining Their Birthright” (Summer 1972) were all reprinted as pamphlets, and a series of editorials on death, ecology, youth, disarmament, world peace, and the equality of men and women were reissued as position statements.

Now we are happy to report a wider circulation on a much larger and more significant scale. In 1977 we commissioned Gayle Morrison, our former colleague and fellow editor now living in Hawaii, to write a forty-page article about Louis C. Gregory, a remarkable individual who devoted most of his adult life to spreading the teachings of the Bahá’í Faith, particularly as they relate to the unity of the races. The small project quickly became a large one, the forty pages grew to one hundred pages, finally, to some four hundred pages. From Ms. Morrison’s preliminary drafts of what almost from the outset was destined to be a book we published three articles that appeared in our Summer 1979, Fall 1979, and Winter 1980 issues. The book itself—To Move the World: Louis C. Gregory and the Advancement of Racial Unity in America—was brought out by the Bahá’í Publishing Trust, in Wilmette, Illinois, in April 1982. It is reviewed elsewhere in this issue.

In an era when print runs of books are becoming increasingly smaller, and publishers are watching stocks of titles and sales more closely than ever, our readers might be interested in the reception of To Move the World. The first printing of five thousand copies is nearly exhausted after only ten months. A paper edition will he released in May ofthis year.

In Hawaii Ms. Morrison—and Louis G. Gregory—have been honored with a resolution passed by the County Council of Kauai.

Last fall Ms. Morrison undertook a promotional trip that took her to Wilmette and Evanston, Illinois; Ottawa and Montreal, Canada; New Haven, Connecticut; Charleston, Pendleton, Goose Creek, and Hemingway, South Carolina; Green Lake, Wisconsin; and San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Vista, California. As she crossed North America Ms. Morrison addressed groups both large and small, black and white. She taught a week’s course in a Bahá’í summer school, addressed more than seven hundred persons attending the seventh annual meeting of the Association for Bahá’í Studies, was feted at receptions and autograph parties, spoke on radio and television, presented a slide program to the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. But wherever she spoke, it was not only the book that drew attention and provoked discussion, but the larger issue of racism and the methods of overcoming it, thus proving the timeliness of the book and the intensity of the issue that must be solved to ensure peace in America.

In commenting on her visit to Charleston, [Page 5] Louis Gregory’s birthplace and boyhood home, Ms. Morrison noted that “Despite heavy rains and a flood, there was a great turnout. . . . Hence, I felt their response to Louis Gregory was one of finding a lost hero—especially among the blacks who were happy to find this great historical figure and the role he played in the cause of race unity during those important and difficult days.”

She also commented that she “felt a greater openness and greater movement on the race issue in the South.” This progress was made, she explained, “because they confronted the race problem in the South. In other areas, racial prejudice is subtle and allowed to settle in the dark recesses of the mind, and integration is superficial and not fundamental.” Ms. Morrison’s book is a challenge to us all to confront once again the issues that will advance the cause of racial unity in America and, in turn, help to move the world toward peace for all races.

MS. Jane Merrill Filstrup, whose article “Bringing Up Baby Bilingual” appears on pages 17-30, tells us that she is expanding the essay into a book for Facts on File. She would very much appreciate our readers’ comments and experiences, which can be addressed to the WORLD ORDER Editorial Board, and which we will happily forward to Ms. Filstrup.

To the Editor

ABOUT KRISHNA

I was delighted to read Mr. [William N.] Garlington’s article on Bahá’í Bhajans in your Winter 1982 issue, which shows how the Bahá’í Faith is being integrated into India’s religious thought and practice. India certainly has much to teach the world; in my own experience, I know that my happy boyhood in that country contributed significantly to my spiritual development.

However, much as I appreciated the article, I feel it is essential to comment on the statement made at the top of page 44: “there is no doubt that Shoghi Effendi . . . affirmed the prophethood of . . . Krishna.” The passage which the author refers to in support of his position, on page 95 of God Passes By, is one frequently cited by those who wish to believe that Krishna was a historical Manifestation of God, but a careful reading of the Guardian’s words does not bear out this interpretation. In this section of the book, Shoghi Effendi quotes many Manifestations and prophets as historical individuals; for example, the following:

“To Him Zoroaster must have alluded when . . .”

“He alone is meant by the prophecy attributed to Gautama Buddha Himself, that . . .”

“To Him Jesus Christ had referred as . . .”

“To Him Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, had alluded in . . .”

In his treatment of Krishna, however, Shoghi Effendi makes a careful distinction so that he will not be referring to Krishna as a historical figure. He says: “To Him the Bhagavad-Gita of the Hindus had referred as . . . the ‘Immaculate Manifestation of Krishna.’” Here, the Guardian is clearly quoting a specific piece of literature, the Bhagavad Gītā—not Krishna—and he is not making any statement at all about Krishna, but is rather making one about Bahá’u’lláh.

As a matter of fact, Krishna cannot be identified with any historical character living [Page 6] at a specific point in time, and he is not even mentioned among the deities of the Vedas and the Upanishads, the foundation of Hindu tradition and thought. It was not until some five centuries or more after the lifetime of Gautama Buddha that the inspiring and soul-stirring story of Krishna blossomed forth in Indian literature (notably in the Bhagavad Gītā). Developing at this relatively late date in the Hindu tradition, the stories that grew up around the Krishna-figure must be assigned to the genre of legend or epic—they are clearly not history: rather than describing a teacher who actually lived on earth, the Krishna-concept depicts the timeless and ideal Manifestation, His majesty, His mercy, and His love.

While it does not refer specifically to Krishna, there is a significant statement on Hinduism appearing on page 198 of the Shoghi Effendi’s messages to India, Dawn of a New Day (New Delhi: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1970): “As regards your study of the Hindu religion. The origins of this and many other religions that abound in India are not quite known to us, and even the Orientalists and the students of religion are not in complete accord about the results of their investigations in that field. The Bahá’í Writings also do not refer specifically to any of these forms of religion current in India. So, the Guardian feels it impossible to give you any definite and detailed information on that subiect.”

Shoghi Effendi’s cautious attitude toward Hinduism takes on added significance when it is compared with a statement mentioning the Buddha (in a letter to a different correspondent) which is found on the following page 199:

“He was also delighted to hear that the Message was given to such large crowds of people in a spot associated with the enlightenment of the Manifestation of God, Buddha.”

To sum up, it is part of the genius of Indian thought that an allegory representing Absolute Truth may be considered far more “real” than some shadowy historical figure who actually lived. Thus, the question of the historicity of Krishna is one which would seem irrelevant to most Indians, and it is not illogical in the Indian environment to present Bahá’u’lláh as the promised “return” of Krishna. However, unless and until the Universal House of Justice provides us with a clear statement on this subject, it would be wise for Bahá’ís in general to refrain from including Krishna in the list of known historical Manifestations of God.

DAVID M. EARL

Dededo, Guam

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A Congressional Resolution: Protesting Iran’s Bigotry

In the Spring 1982 issue of WORLD ORDER we published the testimony about the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran given on 25 May 1982 before the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations of the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives. After the United States Senate unanimously passed a resolution condemning the persecution of the Bahá’í community in Iran, we published, in our Summer 1982 issue, the text of the debate and the resolution as it appeared in the Congressional Record on 30 June 1982, on pages S 7658-62. Now we publish the text of the debate and the resolution of the United States House of Representatives as it approved a concurrent resolution strongly condemning the persecution of the Bahá’ís by the government of Iran. The resolution was passed on 30 September 1982 and appeared in the Congressional Record on the same day on pages H 8229-32.—EDITOR.

CONDEMNING IRANIAN PERSECUTION OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY

Mr. BONKER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for the immediate consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 378) to condemn the Iranian persecution of the Bahá’í community.

The Clerk read the concurrent resolution, as follows:

H. CON. RES. 378

Whereas the Bahá’í community in Iran is experiencing persecution, harassment and disappearances of family members, job discrimination, seizure of bank funds, destruction of personal property, and torture;

Whereas current reports show at least one hundred and thirteen executions of Bahá’ís and Bahá’í religious leaders by the Government of Iran; and

Whereas the continued harassment and murder of Bahá’ís demonstrates that the Government of Iran has launched a conscious effort to destroy the Bahá’í community: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the Congress of the United States condemns persecution of the Bahá’ís, holds the Government of Iran responsible for upholding the rights of all its citizens, including the Bahá’ís, and expresses the hope that the discrimination and brutal executions within the Bahá’í community cease immediately. The Congress urges the Iranian Government to take whatever means are necessary to end this extermination of law-abiding citizens who only wish to worship in freedom.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Washington?

Mr. LEACH of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I rise in support of House Concurrent Resolution 378, a resolution condemning the Iranian persecution of the Bahá’í community.

The Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations held a hearing on May 25, 1982, at the long-standing request of the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. DERWINSKI, who has been tireless in his efforts to bring this tragedy of brutal religious persecution to the attention of the Members of this body.

The testimony presented at that hearing was heart rending and provided the subcommittee with a veritable catalog of the manifestations such campaigns of religious persecution assume. One witness, Judge James Nelson, chairman of the national Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, told how Bahá’ís in Iran are being ruthlessly deprived of their basic human rights and have no recourse for redress [Page 10] of grievances. Speaking of the Bahá’ís in Iran. he said:

They are arbitrarily harassed, arrested, detained, tortured, forced to recant, executed, deprived of citizenship at home and rendered stateless abroad. Their widows and elderly are left homeless and penniless; their leaders are exterminated, often secretly; their homes, crops, jobs, incomes, pensions, property, assets, centers, cemeteries and shrines are confiscated, looted, desecrated and destroyed; their worship is made a criminal act and their literature is suppressed. Their children are deprived of education and kidnapped; their families derogated and destroyed —all constituting the pattern of a systematic, willful and officially sanctioned pogrom.

This very deliberate and systematic assault on the Bahá’ís has been stimulated to a large extent by the fanaticism of radical Islamic elements in political control in Iran today.

While this resolution falls short of incorporating some of the suggestions which emerged from our subcommittee hearing, it is identical to Senate Concurrent Resolution 73 as passed by the Senate and thus certain of final passage without referral to conference. I would like to note for the record, however, several facts which this resolution does not make clear.

First, the Iranian Government is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states, in article 18, that everyone shall have the right to freedom of religion and, in article 27, that persons belonging to religious minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group to profess and practice their own religion. The Constitution of Iran recognizes only the Zoroastrians, the Jews, and the Christians as religious minorities which are free to practice their religion and does not so recognize the Bahá’í faith.

Second, it should be made clear to the Government of Iran that history will record the acts for which they bear responsibility and that they may, at some time in the future, be held accountable under international law, for their persecution and extermination of these religious people.

Third, I would draw the attention of the Members of this body to a resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in March 1982, expressing the deep concern over human rights violations in Iran and requesting the United Nations Secretary General to establish direct contacts with the Government of Iran on the human rights situation in Iran and to continue his efforts to insure that the Bahá’ís are guaranteed their basic human rights. Also, the United Nations General Assembly, of which Iran is a member, adopted by consensus in November 1981 the “Declaration of the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance or Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.”

Finally, while the resolution before us does not specifically call on the President of the United States to take any specific action in response to this human rights tragedy, I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to the administration to do all in its power, in spite of the absence of formal diplomatic relations with the Government of Iran, to back up the efforts of the U.N. Secretary General and the U.N. Human Rights Commission in addressing the persecution of the Bahá’ís, to use opportunities in international forums to express the moral outrage of the American people over what is happening, to urge foreign governments to make urgent appeals to the Iranian authorities to cease the execution and persecution of the Bahá’ís, and to render all appropriate, feasible humanitarian aid to Bahá’ís victimized by this tragedy.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to give this resolution their strong support as an unmistakable signal to the Government of Iran that the Congress of the United States, and the people it represents, will not countenance the continued persecution and repression of this peaceful religious group.

Thank you.

Mr. ZABLOCKI. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlemnn yield?

Mr. LEACH of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. ZABLOCKI. Mr. Speaker, it is shocking that religious persecution of the most barbarous kind still exists in the world. Despite the standards observed by our Government and many other governments throughout the world, the principle of the freedom of Conscience [Page 11] and religion is more honored in the breach than the observance in certain States— Iran’s persecution of the Bahá’ís is a case in point.

The Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, chaired by the Honorable DON BONKER from the State of Washington, has held a series of hearings on the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran. Testimony has revealed that the most gross violations of human rights of the members of that community have been committed there in recent years by the Iranian Government. These have been documented in the subcommittee’s hearings as well as in the spring, 1982 edition of the major publication of the Bahá’ís, “World Order.”

House Concurrent Resolution 378 expresses the moral outrage with this dreadful situation by condemning Iran’s persecution of the Bahá’ís. It holds the Government of Iran responsible for this behavior, and expresses the hope that the Government should immediately cease its discriminatiun of the Bahá’í community. Mr. Speaker, I urge the adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 378.

Mr. BONKER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LEACH of Iowa. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. BUNKER. Mr. Speaker, the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations has conducted a series of hearings on religious practice throughout the world. We have been particularly concerned about the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran. Testimony has revealed that the grossest violations of human rights of the community have been committed by the Iranian Government. These have been documented in subcommittee hearings as well as in the spring 1982 edition of the major publication of the Bahá’ís.

Mr. Speaker, the resolution before us holds the Government of Iran responsible for this behavior, and expresses the hope the Government should immediately cease its discrimination of the Bahá’í community.

I urge adoption of House Congressional Resolution 378.

• Mr. DERWINSKI. Mr. Speaker, I urge the House to approve House Concurrent Resolution 378, condemning the persecution of the Bahá’í community by the Moslem fundamentalist regime in Iran.

The vicious vindictiveness of the Moslem fundamentalist regime in Iran is nearly pervasive with almost every segment of society subjected to the terror of its inhumane rulers. Religious minorities especially are persecuted severely and of these, the largest of all, the Bahá’í community, has suffered most.

The Bahá’í religion was founded in Iran 139 years ago. Its founder, Bahá’u’lláh, believed by Bahá’ís to be the most recent Prophet of God, taught, among other things, the oneness of all the races, the equality of the sexes, and the common foundation of the world religions. Opposition from Iran’s religious and government leaders, however, was encountered from the outset. It persisted over the years with varying intensity but never has the virulence of the Moslem clergy been as strong as it is now.

Like Bahá’í communities everywhere, the one in Iran abstains from all political activity, is peaceful, works toward brotherhood, promotes tolerance, and seeks mutual understanding with members of all faiths and groups. Yet the reign of terror unleashed by Iranian fanatics, both in government and out, has been relentless and savage.

Christians and Jews have also been imprisoned and Jews have been executed where religious affiliation appeared to be an important factor. But both of these groups, it should be noted, are protected by the Iranian Constitution. The Bahá’ís, however, are not even recognized under the Constitution and are subject to persecution, imprisonment, and execution simply by virtue of their religious ties. Absurd charges have been leveled against them. They have been accused of “entering into battle against God” and “corruption on earth.” “Espionage on behalf of Israel” is another frequent charge. Under Islamic law, a practicing Bahá’í is practicing heresy and the Iranian high court has upheld the execution of Bahá’í leaders for their religious activities.

Mobs have attacked Bahá’ís in Iran’s cities, towns, and villages resulting in much property [Page 12] damage, widespread injury and numerous deaths. The Government itself has directed a nationwide pogrom, a systematic annihilation of Bahá’ís based solely on their religious belief. Many ordinary members and almost all Bahá’í leaders have been executed as “heretics.” They have been jailed unjustly, their homes burned, their cemeteries destroyed, and their property seized. Their children have been kidnapped. For example, teenage students were abducted from their schools by Moslem instructors who claimed that the young people had converted to Islam. Their teachers refused to meet with their parents and local authorities refused to cooperate in attempting to locate the kidnapped children.

In Miyan-Duab, a mob, after destroying the local Bahá’í center, fell upon a man and his son, dragged their bodies through the street, chopped them up into small pieces and finally burned them.

In Nuk, a farming village near Birjand, 15 masked men attacked a couple in their home at night, poured kerosene on the husband and set him on fire before forcing him to run for a few yards. Finally, they heaped wood upon him, burning him to death. His wife, subjected to similar treatment, died a few days later.

In Yazd, following the execution of seven Bahá’ís, including an 85-year-old man, the authorities presented their widows with bills for the cost of the bullets used.

The House of Báb, the holiest Bahá’í shrine in Iran and a place of pilgrimage for the Bahá’ís of the world, was seized on the pretext that it would be protected by the authorities against mob attack. It was ultimately razed and the site obliterated by a hastily built road.

As reported by the committee, House Concurrent Resolution 378 takes note of the persecution and harassment of the Bahá’í community in Iran. It cites the execution of 113 Bahá’ís and Bahá’í religious leaders by the Government of Iran, the disappearances of family members, job discrimination, seizure of bank funds, destruction of personal property, and torture. Further, the resolution notes that the actions taken against the Bahá’ís demonstrate that the Government of Iran has launched a conscious effort to destroy the Bahá’í community.

Finally, the resolution states that it is resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring, “That the Congress of the United States condemns the persecution of the Bahá’ís, holds the Government of Iran responsible for upholding the rights of all its citizens, including the Bahá’ís, and expresses the hope that the discrimination and brutal executions within the Bahá’í community will cease immediately.” The Congress also urges the Iranian Government to take whatever steps are necessary to bring the extermination of the Bahá’ís to an end.

It was with a heavy heart that I cosponsored this resolution. The tragedy the Bahá’ís are suffering in Iran is as grim in its own way as the World War I Turkish genocide effort against the Armenians. The problem is hidden due to the absence of media coverage in Iran; the few Western reporters there are restricted to the capital. Bahá’ís are a special target of the religious fanatics that now run the Government of Iran, and this savage persecution continues without world attention to it.

Outside Iran this resolution, therefore, could have special significance. Certainly it is not going to change the policies of the Iranian Government, but perhaps it will alert the sleeping conscience of the world to the terrible condition of the Bahá’ís in Iran and the immense suffering borne by the faithful in the name of their religion.

Like my distinguished colleague, Mr. LEACH, I would have preferred the language of the resolution which we introduced. It spelled out in greater detail the background of the problem of the Bahá’ís in Iran, the U.N. Human Rights Commission report and a number of other things of note.

The principal consideration, nontheless, is that proper notice be taken of this tragedy and that we recognize the ongoing suffering of the Bahá’ís in Iran. Perhaps we can awaken people throughout the world to this issue. I trust that this resolution will be quickly passed by the full House.

I urge you to join me in voting in favor of [Page 13] House Concurrent Resolution 378. •

• Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I am here to urge my colleagues to vote for House Concurrent Resolution 378, and to express my concern about the religious persecution of the 300,000 Iranian Bahá’ís by the Khomeini regime. I know that many in Congress also believe that we must condemn and oppose the harsh repression and possible genocide of the Bahá’ís in Iran. It is quite sad and ironic that a people who for over 100 years have striven to bring about the unity of mankind, world peace, and world order, should be the target of flagrant violations of human rights.

I first learned about the plight of the Bahá’ís in Iran through constituents of mine, who are either themselves members of the Bahá’í community or who are friends of members. The shocking and disturbing letters and news clippings which I received from people in the Ninth District of California, prompted me to investigate this matter further, and then to speak out against the genocidal actions of the Khomeini regime.

I would like to share with my colleagues, some excerpts from “A Cry From the Heart,” by an eminent Western Bahá’í, William Sears. This book is an impassioned account of the horrors perpetrated against the Iranian Bahá’ís, a refutation of the false and contradictory charges leveled against them, and an exposé of the genocidal purpose of the present outbreak. The following excerpt describes the atrocities taking place against the Bahá’ís in Iran:

The atrocities taking place against Bahá’ís today throughout Iran are no longer matters of suspicion or opinion. They are matters of fact. The proof can be found in the records of libraries, newsrooms, United Nations Agencies, human rights organizations, telex and cable files in every part of the world.

The spotlight of world publicity has now been turned directly upon Iran. It is no longer a secret that the killings, burnings, lootings, and torture of Bahá’ís are still continuing, even as these pages are being written. It is no longer possible for the persecutors to suppress or minimize the enormity of their crimes, or to hide anonymously behind the fiction of “uncontrollable mobs.”

Those days are over!

Confiscation of property, of bank accounts, burning and looting of homes, officially sanctioned executions of innocent victims—all these things take place everywhere, in the streets, in the market-place, and in the homes.

The Bahá’ís are harassed. beaten, abused, killed. Sometimes husband and wife together. Or an entire family or a group of close friends, or neighbours, or business associates. Chosen at random. At the whim of the killers.

Stabbed, stoned, hanged, burned alive, hacked to pieces with knives, stood before firing-squads.

Men, women, children. No one is spared.

Their crime?

They are Bahá’ís.

These attacks have been going on for nearly one hundred and fifty years.

The first onslaught of the current persecutions began in 1978. It is now in its fourth year. The severity and spread of the outrages increase each day and become ever more sinister. There is no end in sight, and no sign of a let-up.

What is most alarming and threatening about the present avalanche is not its violence, that has always occurred. It is the devilish ingenuity of the assault designed to eliminate an entire community of nearly half a million souls. The terror has now spread into every level of Bahá’í life, to city dweller, villager and farmer.

At first the Bahá’í business houses, the repository of the savings of rich and poor Bahá’ís alike, were confiscated, with no recompense. Then the great Bahá’í hospital in Teheran, built, operated and fully supported by Bahá’ís where patients of all religions and backgrounds were treated with the same loving care, was taken over. Next, Bahá’í holy places throughout the country were occupied to put to whatever use, often personal, the revolutionary authorities, equally often the man with a gun, might decide. The meeting-places of the local communities were next to be taken. Then, having deprived this helpless community, which has no rights in law, of its funds, hospital, holy places and religious properties, attention was turned to the leaders of the community. All nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly were kidnapped and have not been heard of, except by rumour, to this day. Outstanding Bahá’ís in the provincial communities were next and many of those have been executed. The obvious aim is to get rid of the capable, trusted, elected leaders before launching the attack on the rank and file.

The Bahá’í community they are trying to destroy is the largest religious minority in Iran. It has more members than the Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian communities combined. In spite of this, the Bahá’í Faith is not recognized and Bahá’ís are deprived of their basic human rights. There is no one and no place in the entire country they can approach for protection. They cannot appeal to the clergy, to the courts, or to the authorities. The clergy and their religious courts are the authorities.

They are engaged in a process which the entire [Page 14] civilized world has always been against.

It is called: Genocide!

Again, I urge my colleagues to vote for House Concurrent Resolution 378. We must express the extent to which we condemn and deplore the situation of the Bahá’ís in Iran. Thank you. •

Mr. LEACH of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Washington?

There was no objection.

The current resolution was agreed to.

A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

Mr. BONKER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker’s table the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 73) to condemn the Iranian persecution of the Bahá’í community, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Washington?

There was no objection.

The Clerk read the Senate concurrent resolution, as follows:

S. Con. Res. 73

Whereas the Bahá’í community in Iran is experiencing persecution, harassment and disappearances of family members, job discrimination, seizure of bank funds, destruction of personal property, and torture;

Whereas current reports show at least one hundred and thirteen executions of Bahá’ís and Bahá’í religious leaders by the Government of Iran; and

Whereas the continued harassment and murder of Bahá’ís demonstrates that the Government of Iran has launched a conscious effort to destroy the Bahá’í community: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the Congress of the United States condemns persecution of the Bahá’ís, holds the Government of Iran responsible for upholding the rights of all its citizens, including the Bahá’ís, and expresses the hope that the discrimination and brutal executions within the Bahá’í community cease immediately. The Congress urges the Iranian Government to take whatever means are necessary to end this extermination of law abiding citizens who only wish to worship in freedom.

Mr. BONKER. Mr. Speaker, this concurrent resolution is identical to the House concurrent resolution just passed. We are acting on this resolution so that the House and Senate can act in concert on the resolution concerning persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran.

The Senate concurrent resolution was concurred in.

A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

A similar House concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 378) was laid on the table.

[Page 15]

[Page 16]

Walk with the One

walk with the One

through the Lover’s country

toward oneness

in the beginning

everything

and nothing

in the end

nothing

and

everything

—Greg Brown

---

Lost Children

Who are these people, lost, oblivious,

running before the storm,

who spend their time like it was small change,

wasting it on baubles and toys.

If they could hear their chatter

they would know that they are lost

but they are children at the carnival

and don’t yet miss the guiding hand.

I dream at night of twin stars

in the Eastern sky

that shatter the brilliance of diamonds,

and by that light

I see the path and am quickened.

My ears are deafened by the braying of donkeys

and my heart is sick from

seeing the bitter faces and cold hearts.

But I am not lost in their darkness

for my lantern shone through the storm at Zanján

and lit up the Most Great Prison.

—Craig Loehle

[Page 17]

Bringing Up Baby Bilingual

BY JANE MERRILL FILSTRUP

CHILDREN who learn a second language before the age of five can be taken for native speakers of that language for the duration of their lives if they continue to use it. By contrast, youth or adults who study a language later can never be as fluent or at home in it. Clearly, small children have the knack, but recent studies of early language acquisition indicate that its basis is in listening, practice, rehearsing —that is, in processes comparable to those adults employ when learning languages. Much of children’s work in the early years is spoken language: vocabulary, grammar, syntax, idioms, even hand motions. Young children have the time to play at becoming more fluent, at expressing themselves better.

In the 1920s and 1930s early technical literature on bilingualism was pessimistic. Following the image that a bilingual was an archer with two arrows in his bow, researchers expected to find all kinds of trouble and usually did: bilingual children were behind in school, retarded in intelligence, and had weak or disturbed self-identities. Little effort was made in early studies to account for factors such as socioeconomic status and educational opportunities.

In the early 1960s Wallace Lambert, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal, set out to investigate the bilingual deficit with the goal of developing remedial teaching strategies. To his surprise Professor Lambert found that French-English bilingual children scored significantly ahead of monolinguals on both verbal and nonverbal measures of intelligence. “Bilinguals,” Lambert reports, “were quicker at shooting off in new directions, changing mental sets, and using a more open imagination.” Studies in other settings have tended to confirm that bilingual children are at an advantage in an aspect of creativity known as “flexible thinking.”

Dr. Sam G. McClellan, a child psychiatrist, gives reassurance that the “weight” of plural languages is one most children assume as a challenge: “In the course of twenty-five years of general psychiatric practice, the first decade of which was spent mostly in work with children, I have not seen any emotional or psychological harm resulting from raising children to speak two (or even three) languages, when this occurred ‘naturally,’—that is, through the child’s being exposed from infancy to hearing both languages spoken in the home, or one (or two) in the home and another by society outside the home.”

Early educators work very hard, rightly, to give the five million American children from foreign-language homes a command, as soon as possible, of English. But why should the mother tongue wither? Many bilingual school programs are designed to be transitional—three years is their arbitrary duration. Subject matter is taught in the first language before transferring the students to an all-English program. These programs do good by affecting positively an individual’s self-image and achievement in the dominant English milieu. Richard Rodriguez, of Chicano heritage and with an academic background in Renaissance English letters, writes in [Page 18] his Hunger of Memory that his parochial school and parents served him, his brothers, and sisters best by deconditioning his native Spanish. However, the underlying message of the antibilingualists among American educators is that a non-English language is an impediment, excess baggage, notions that are out of tune with either a competitive job market or, internationally, with a shrinking globe. Moreover, to discourage the home language greatly underestimates children’s ability to keep the different language skeins “straight.” It relegates the first language of nonnative English speakers to the kitchen and deprives children of the dominant culture from extending their knowledge and trust.

Constructing a language Biplane

FOR THE PURE interest of the task, and to raise our children (boy and girl twins) as citizens of the world, my husband and I decided to raise them bilingual. Spanish would have made sense as the second tongue because of the large Hispanic population in New York City. But I chose instead to instill the language of which I have the best mastery, French.

Although Wallace Lambert and various psychiatrists gave a green light to our bilingual experiment from a developmental perspective, we did not implement the plan in the first year of the children’s lives. With the twins at the babbling stage, it seemed too soon. Yet for a look down the pike I visited several bilingual families where the languages were split between the two parents. I learned that maintaining the recessive language required an artful blend of relaxation and self-discipline on the part of the adult speaker but was greatly rewarding. The most exotic situation was a Japanese mother and a Yiddish-speaking, Jewish-American father. They interested me particularly because their trilingualism was deliberately constructed, as our bilingualism would be.

The father, although he had spoken Yiddish since childhood, had no connections with other Yiddish speakers. Mr. Schwartzman put me on the spot: If I was seriously interested in bringing up our children in plural languages, what was I waiting for? I bemoaned my inadequate vocabulary, barren in the area of concrete and household words with which small children operate. He shoved aside my doubt: “I keep a dictionary by my bed. You can do the same.”

Since that encounter my husband, Chris (a librarian who uses Arabic and Persian in his daily job), and I went ahead with our plan. We began when Emma and Burton were eighteen months old. My exclusive language with them became French; Chris used English, which he and I also used in conversation.

How silly it felt at first to speak a foreign language to toddlers. But in a few months the children were answering me in French, and the reverse would have seemed odd. Within a few more months Emma and Burton were mastering faster than I was some new words that I took from the dictionary, and they were reinforcing my vocabulary from time to time (“P" being for putois d’Amérique— skunk, and papou—papoose, as well as papillon—butterfly). By three they greatly favored English, yet their understanding of French equaled their passive English. Their speech was a porphyry of English mass encrusted with French words and [Page 19] phrases. When given the definite article for an object, they responded with its French name.

Now four years old, they chatter easily and confidently in French. Their grammar seems on a par with that of French children their age, although their vocabulary is less rich. They address each parent in the correct language for that person and, when by themselves, alternate languages in their conversations and games. We are proud of the bilingual skills our children are achieving. But we recognize that it is an extra demand on them. I prod them to sort out words from one language to the other but do not correct their grammatical mistakes.

English comes naturally in a society where English is spoken predominantly. Yet to instill a second language takes a concerted effort on the parents’ part. When the attempt is artificial, as is ours, we increasingly seek ways to immerse the children in the nondominant tongue. As the twins move out into the community, their concourse with persons other than mommy and daddy grows in importance, and their parents gradually loom less and less large in their language lives. But their occasional encounters with the foreign-language culture become the best advertisement for motivating the children to improve their fluency.

Our modest intention was to give the twins two languages. At first, they were on a desert island, in a manner of speaking, an island of French language in an English sea. They were there by their parents’ design, the result of a cradle wish that they might possess two languages from babyhood. To our delighted surprise, with language comes, almost willy—nilly, a goodly portion of its concomitant culture. It has become clear that the twins will grow up in plural cultures as well.

To buoy the bilingual program we have hosted two vivacious, adventuresome French-Canadian au pairs during their school’s summer holidays. An ad in a Montreal newspaper brought us the first, Chantal. She returned a year later to accompany us on a family trip. During the summer after the children turned four, one of Chantal’s school friends, Nicole, filled the same role of French sitter and fond amie. Again the Quebeçoise visitor brought a smiling countenance, a habit for taking long walks, and an exciting waft of foreignness in sartorial style, food preparation, songs and games, turns of phrases, and even laughter.

The au pairs are like cousins to Emma and Burton, while, outside the home, they profit from the chance to see the world and improve their English. Both young women speak a parfait français (proper French). As much as possible, they emphasize standard French with us, though, of course, their accent is French-Canadian. Since it will be much easier for our family to spend time in Quebec than in Europe, we are very pleased to have Emma and Burton exposed to French-Canadian style. If a Professor Higgins detects this souvenir in their speech at some future date, so much the better.

The School

WHEN a French friend introduced me to the new French-American School of New York, in Larchmont, a twenty-minute drive from our home, it seemed heaven sent. It still does! The daily fascination of having the twins at the school is that they not only operate in a dual-language setting but cross-pollinate with other notions and behaviors. By means of this program my children, and the binational and French children in the school, live with two languages in the outside world as well as with one or two in their homes.

The school, entirely tuition supported, is housed in a vacant portion of a large [Page 20] (measured by the size of the preschoolers it seems vast) parochial school. The codirectors, Mrs. Katrine Watkins and Mme Sylvette Maschino, left the Lycée Française on Manhattan’s East Side to fulfill their long-term dream of creating their own school, at once bilingual and bicultural. By adding classes each year they will offer nursery through grade six by 1984.

It is an ambitious school, already growing strong. In the “petite section” of Emma’s and Burton’s I saw Children whose faces are bright and teachers who are excited about the program and who give an uncommon amount of care to everyday activities.

The feature of the school that made our children’s first institutional experience different was its two languages, woven into the nursery day as they are now woven —partly thanks to the school—into the lives of the twins.

The staff believes that the school cannot be a Tower of Babel, not even “creative chaos,” if the dual-language learning is to take place. They are trying to give a more disciplined environment than an English-speaking American counterpart perhaps would. Even the smallest children have to greet visitors politely, listen and take turns, stand in lines, and sit down with the others. Most of the day is structured. More structure, Katrine Watkins emphasizes, is not merely the French way but is tailored to the bilingual nature of the program. “We have to get the two languages going. At the age of three you cannot be motivated to learn another language per se. It’s virtually never ‘Wow, I want to learn French (or English)!’ The child has to be in a situation where the people speak the language they don’t speak, and where that language is needed to have concourse with them.” Mrs. Watkins notes that, even a few weeks before the child starts “spouting” the new language, he or she babbles confidently in something that sounds like it.

Math and literature are taught in French in the grades, as are premath and prereading; science, art, and social studies are taught in English. An effort is made to show children pictures of the flat, almond-covered French birthday cake, the galette, and even to practice early letters on the finely lined graph paper that children in France use for compositions. Details such as these help bring the distant culture closer in an attractive way. Three year olds are already dancing many charming circle dances, singing traditional French songs, and performing brief choral programs for families twice a year.

Gymnastics have a French cast, too: somersaults, pirouettes, and jumping jacks. The development of gross motor skills has a high priority in the school program and is a crucial anodyne to the verbal nature of the bulk of the program. Sylvie, an assistant teacher dressed in a chic, mink-colored velour “pull” and French jeans, puts the little ones joyously through their paces. Gently, she underscores the beauty of order—“Dans la ligne!” (“Straighten up the line!”). The children drill on directionality and on following directions, as well as on the motor skills. They all experience success on the easiest jumps; she urges them all to perfect their form on the somersaults and pirouettes. During the free-play period in the gym later in the morning, one can see an ice capades of children drawing close and clinging to Sylvie, racing away, and holding hands in whip formation before breaking into ones and twos. When our children play school at home, they are as apt to engage in saute-mouton (leapfrog) as they are to pick up paper, pencils, and books.

The twins are aware of being bilingual for the same reason that they are aware of twinness—the world reminds them. One day, when she was almost four, Emma asked me, “Maman, est-ce que quand je suis une adulte, je peux partir pour France?” [Page 21] (“Mommy, when I am an adult, may I go to France?”) I answered, certainly. She said, “Merci Maman. J’ai besoin de voir les gens qui savent seulement le français.” (“Thank you, Mommy. I need to see people who know how to speak only French”) Chimed in Burton, “Moi ausii.” (“So do I!”)

Something lovable about the children in their late threes was their emotiveness, the extent to which they exteriorized many of their feelings and problems. During the same month that Emma secured my promise of a trip to France someday, Burton was sorting out the implications of the two languages as well. He told me he wanted French people who come to the house to learn English—and English people to learn French. The beginning of a utopia!

That night he asked me what an erector set in his big Richard Scarry word-book was called in French. I didn’t know, I said, and asked if he would bring the French version? He brought it, found the same page, and we read “jeu de construction.” (Burton understood a big word in French such as this instantly, my diary notes, but he still had trouble getting his mouth around it.) Then after reading the rest of the double-page spread and showing certain objects to Emma, he said that “un jour” (“one day”) he would like to put the books together. That way we could speak French and English at the same time. Off he went for Scotch tape (I mandated masking tape instead), and after laying the back covers side by side, bound them together. The results did not please him entirely, but he carefully flexed the conjoined sides of the new “book” a number of times before detaching them. What effort to relate the languages could be more concrete?

The children often translate important communiqués into French or English for the benefit of the other parent. Both parents may understand both languages, but it is axiomatic to Emma’s and Burton’s mental set that a different language be associated with each. They know they can lapse into English with me and be understood, yet not be responded to in kind. Emma, slightly the more advanced in language development, does this as a pleasantry from time to time. I look as though mildly puzzled, and she continues, with a look of mischief, en français. They nearly always bring me books from their library that I have read before in French (no matter what the book’s actual language). If they ask for The Pokey Little Puppy, it is a translation they really want to hear. Hence I launch into Le Petit Chiot Brun et Blanc or some other improvised conceit. Our bond is French enough that I am happy to do so. Classics like The Wind in the Willows and Charlotte’s Web will be read aloud by the twins’ father, not by me, unless I can lay my hands on a French translation.

At two and a half Burton related to us a dream for the first time: “Emma, when I was fast asleep, a bee walked on my blanket.” Then he turned and clasped my wrist. “Maman, j’ai quelque chose à te dire. Quand j’étais endormi une abeille a marché sur ma couverture et j’ai fait WOOSH.” (“Mommy, I have something to tell you. When I was sleeping, a bee walked on top of my blanket, and I made a WOOSH.”) Translating for a second party is akin to a child’s telling an adult deliberately what the adult clearly knows already. The child feels proud and “one up.” With our home’s bilingualism, the children have many chances to teach mommy and daddy. Burton: “Emma ne m’aime pas.” (“Emma doesn’t like me”) Emma: [Page 22] “I’m just teasing.” Maman: “Emma taquine.” (“Emma’s only teasing”) Emma: “En anglais, Maman, on dit TEASING.”) (“In English, Mommy, we say TEASING.”)

A second illustration shows how methodical the children are about such translations. After Burton told some peanut-butter jokes—statements about peanut butter as though it were a child, not a thing—Emma said to me, “Il est rigole. Tu sais ce que ça veut dire? Qu’il donne des drôles histoires.” (“He’s funny. Do you know what that means? That he relays funny stories.”)

In their private play the children babbled (talked in nonsense words and in sounds French and English) until about three and a half, well beyond when they stopped babbling to themselves in English. One day in February I crouched on the stairs to listen to the tail end of Emma’s reading aloud a picture book to herself. After she closed the book, her singsong talk was as follows: “Maman, you are the most, the most. Le la le lapin, Bugs Bunny, se cache dans un trou. A little baby. Une tourterelle. A little book. Un drapeau. Trotsaut [Peter Rabbit’s sibling]. Le petite roue sur le grand stroller. La maman souris, le papa souris. Voilà le petit vers. Ici un haricots vert.” (“Mommy, you are the most, the most. The rabbit, Bugs Bunny, hides in a hole. A little baby. A little book. A flag. Flopsy. The little wheel on the big stroller. The mommy mouse, the daddy mouse. There is the little worm. Here is a green bean.”) The drift of this overheard soliloquy is that, although the children keep their language as pure as they can in conversation, in private they sometimes practice a great fluctuation. Particularly when alone with books, dolls, and trucks, they often bounce their thoughts from one side of the verbal court to the other and take the net of separation down at will.

Children are more eloquent when they have something to say than when they answer adults. In water play came both twins’ first French sentences: “Moi éponge verte,” (“[Give] me green sponge”) and “Éponge rose!” (“Pink sponge!”) when they wanted pastel sponges from the kitchen. It is a wonder to behold a young child’s jumps, from word to comment and self-statement, to story and discourse. Burton at three and a half expressed to his father how he was going to surprise him on the train by walking “vraiment doucement!” (“really quietly”). The scene was so vivid in Burton’s mind that his imagination seemed to fill the room.

Words were tooled very early by Emma into secrets. She fine tunes her French to tell me them in our “secret language.” She whispers to me sweet nothings like “Pinocchio a un longue nez” (“Pinocchio has a long nose”) or “Les danseuses de Cendrillon sont très belles” “The dancers of Cinderella are very beautiful”)—always in her Sunday-best French.

The children summon their most fluent French for different kinds of subjects. Emma takes some of her giant steps with reference to beautiful clothes and dressing up. The sight of a new flower-girl mannequin in a bridal shop set off a monologue about womanhood, an unprecedented spurt of French at three years and seven months: “Quand je suis une adulte, je vais me marier avec Burton,” said Emma, swooning over the gowns. (“When I am an adult, I’m going to marry Burton”) But mightn’t Burton like to be best man, I suggested, and carry the ring? She retorted: “Donc je vais me marier avec un papa homme qui prend soin des animaux dans le zoo. Et je t’invite aux noces, Maman. Et tout le monde va danser.” (“Well, I’m going to marry a daddy man who takes care of the animals in the zoo. And I invite you to the wedding, Mommy. And everybody will dance.”)

Many of Burton’s giant steps are made when he thinks about cars and trucks, just as his first reading is of car models’ names. Playing with Leggos is a time for relaxed [Page 23] language, as opposed to language that endeavors to make a certain message. When I passed by his Leggo garage, Burton, just past three and a half, plunged into French speech markedly more evolved than the usual, in order to let me in on his construction. “Il ne peut pas rouler cette auto. C’est arrêté. Maintenant tu peux essayer de rouler ice, petite auto. Oh! il ne peut pas. Donc il remonte dedans. Voilà. Tu sais pourquoi j’ai fait ça? Vois comme il y a plus d’espace. Tu sais ce qui va arriver? Le long auto et le camion vont aller très bien. Le car de course va aller vite et le camion-verseur va aller doucement. Il va cbez le garagiste. Il faut le reparer. Ça prend longtemps. Je vais laisser longtemps. Camion, au revoir!” (“He can’t drive this car. It’s stopped. Now you can try to drive here, little car. Oh! he can’t make it. So he goes back up inside. There. You know why I did that? See how there is more space now. You know what happened? The long car and the truck are going to ride very well. The race car can go fast, and the dump truck can go slowly. He’s on his way to the auto mechanic’s. The truck needs a repair. That will take a while. I’ll leave it a while. Goodbye truck!”)

Some of our games I realize upon reflection are actually language exercises. One we call No More Applesauce. It starts when someone makes a short, adamant statement of quantity, such as “Pas de compote de pomme” (“No applesauce”). “Beaucoup de compote de pomme” (“lots of applesauce”), says the next person, substituting a different adjective. “Encore de. . .” (“still more”), continues the next, and round and round the game goes. When our inventiveness is exhausted, we either drop the game or latch onto a new, as long as possible, noun.

Trying out a new word can be a game itself. At one point Emma fixed on donc (Thus, so). For the weekend, she was the epitome of the French logician. For example, she would say, “I’m wearing a dress, donc je ne salis pas ma robe” (“therefore, I shall not soil my dress”).

Once, when I was in college, my English professor brought his little daughter along to dinner at my dormitory. A bouquet of pansies brightened the table, and he explained lightly to the child the word root of these and other of Shakespeare’s flowers. The father’s lesson—conveyed so naturally—made as much an impression on me as anything in the course. I suspect that sensitivity to and love for language are especially apt to happen when the child lives in two languages and is semiconsciously comparing one to the other. Emma took our construction paper, markers, and white glue and did a painting of glue swirls on a midnight blue paper drawn with orange loops. Then she tore off the corners and glued them at center. “Je fais une collage avec beaucoup de colle, une collage colle,” she said with delight. (“I am making a collage with a lot of glue, a glued collage.”)

A favorite language game of the twins is a release from meaning. They like to crawl on all fours, pretend to lick their fur, purr, and motion with their paws. One will say, “on va parler miao.” (“Let’s talk in meows.”) At four, caught up in intoning feline sounds, Burton said, “Tu ne sais pas ce que je dis. Moi je sais.” (“You don’t know what I’m saying. But I know.”)

They are also attuned to defining words. We saw a picture of a baby in a hammock in a nursery book. “Je sais ce qui est un hamac” (“I know what a hammock is”), volunteered Burton, nearly four. “On prend une couverture, on monte dans un arbre, on fait un noeud—non, deux noeuds, et on va dedans.” (“You take a blanket, scale a tree, make a knot—no, two knots, and you go inside.”)

We are ever coining, guessing at, French words. If only we could mail order from a Quebec supermarket, much of this homegrown French could be done without. [Page 24] As it is, when dictionary and friends fail us, I give wheat germ a descriptive name—“grains de germes de blé.” We call the card game Old Maid “Vieille Fille" and have no idea whether the same game is played outside North America. A few examples show how handy Emma finds it to conjugate a familiar French verb in English, at age four: “Hildegarde coud-ed (sew-ed) it,” or “My dress is tricot (knit-ted) here.” Sometimes a sentence is smoothly blended in the franglais: “Maman, will you please fondre my crême glacée?” (“Mommy, will you please melt my ice cream?”)

While their language is plastic, all children use it creatively. It is of interest what kind of inventions typically occur in the twins’ French. They make naive errors but also discover puns and cognates. Burton, nearing four, covered a fat carrot end with nails and announced: “This is a spon. Un spon est quelque chose qui tourne dans l’air et qui va dans le bois et qui entre dans la cuisine et on le mange. On peut cuisiner ça dansm le feu. Tu connais les spans?” (“This is a spon. A spon is something that revolves in the air and goes into the woodwork and enters the kitchen and we eat it. It can be cooked in the fire. Are you acquainted with spons?”) I demurred. “Seulement moi je les connais” (“Only I know them”), he said solemnly.

Storytelling flourished on Saturday nights during Winter 1981-82 when we were missing Daddy, out moonlighting to buy a new car. It didn’t feel like a bookish time. We all felt a little lost but experimental. We stayed up too late and, to temper our giddiness, polished furniture and cleaned house. Then we ate colorful ice cream sundaes (for the value of vocabulary, not nutrition, I gave them nonpareils) and fell exhausted onto the big bed to swap stories.

Stories of the lineage of Red Riding Hood proved popular. Emma’s storytelling style is more flamboyant and extemporaneous. Burton’s stories are brief, to the point, and seem intact before the telling.

Burton, at three years and eight months, picked up on an archaic French form, where a verbal phrase becomes a proper name, of the type of “Le Chat qui Pêche” or “Le Chien que Fume,” the Parisian café-bars. He said, in a storytelling hush, “Bidou a dit une gentille chose. ‘Met une bête dans la poubelle!’ Et les gens ont fait ça. Ils ont met dans un trou. C’est ça qu’ils ont fait avec le loup. Et le loup n’est plus méchant. Maintenant il sauve les gens. Le gens appelle Bidou maintenant un nouveau nom: Bidou repare-le-loup.” “Bidou said something nice. ‘Put a wild animal into the trash.’ And the people did that. They put [it] into a hole. That’s what they did with the wolf. And the wolf isn’t mean anymore. Now he saves people. People call Bidou by a new name now: Bidou-repairs-the-wolf.”)

At the same time, Emma was trying to animate a cast of characters in her stories. There followed “Mon histoire des bijoux” (“My story of the jewels”):

Il ya un horloge, un daddy horloge, el une maman horloge. II n’y a pas de bébé. Tu sais pourquoi? Ils étaient des moines et des nonnes. Et puis ils ant marié et accouché un bébé.

Ils on un grand lit pour le papa, un moyen pour la maman, et un petit pour le bébé. Une cuiller et assiette pour le daddy, la maman, et le bébé aussi.

Et puis, un grand orage vient, mais ils ont un bâteau qui va sur l’eau. Le bateau est plein de boucles d’oreilles et plein de bijoux, et avec tout cela un marin que était une femme. C’était le bateau à elle. Les horloges se sont reposés.

Et puis un grand rocher vient sur le bâteau, et la casse. Le marin, la femme, met tous les boucles d’or sur chaque oreille et tous les autres colliers et bijoux dans la bouche. Et puis après l’orage, elle les a enlevés. Elle sort les boucles d’oreilles de sa bouche, et c’est la fin.

[Page 25]

There is a clock, a daddy clock, and a mommy clock. There is no baby. Do you know why? They were monks and nuns. And then they married and gave birth to a baby.

They have a big bed for the daddy, a middle-sized one for the mommy, and a little one for the baby. A spoon and plate for the daddy, mommy, and baby, too.

And then, a big storm comes, but they have a boat that goes on the water. The boat is full of earrings and full of jewels, and with all that a sailor who was a woman. It was her boat. The clocks took a rest.

And then a big rock comes on the boat, and breaks it. The sailor, the woman, put all the earrings on one of her ears and all the other necklaces and jewels into her mouth. And then after the storm she took them off. She takes the earrings out of her mouth, and that’s the end.)

An interesting sidelight on the twins’ stories is that where in conversation they frequently tuck in a word from the other language, when the appropriate word is unknown, they rarely do so in stories. My contention is that a story can in general be led down a detour, allowing the young storyteller to cover any language gaps.

Although the children are read and memorize countless nursery rhymes and quite a few poems in English, when they create little poems it has always been in French. One day Emma came up with “Crisse le glace, Crisse la glace dans l’eau.” (“Crunch goes the ice, Crunch goes the ice in the water.”) Burton added a third verse, “L’auto crisse sur la glace dans l’eau.” (“Crunch the car goes on the ice in the water.”) Then he told me his first poem solo (how often when one twin, in this case Emma, feels under the weather, the other shines!): “Mon camion va très vite et très doucement. Car il y a beaucoup de jouets dedans. Et (mon poème est très longue et nouveau) beaucoup d’autos et beaucoup de bâtiments et casseroles et barrières et hommes et femmes, et c’est tout.” (“My truck goes very fast and very gently. Because there are many toys inside. And also (my poem is new and very long) many cars and many buildings and pots and fences and men and women, and that’s all.”)

How hard is it for a person comfortable but not impeccable in a foreign language to speak it to his or her children? I often reflect how my French is the last part of my being to wake up in the morning. Sometimes the mere thought of wording an explanation of a mechanical process or scientific principle in French makes me pass the buck to their daddy. But do not words have to be carefully chosen for dialogues with the young even in one’s native language? Moreover, French is like a saddle to which I have become accustomed. There is the pleasure of the exercise. My maternal grandmother kept her Latin grammar and readers alongside her prayer books and the Times daily crossword puzzle, on the side table. She applied herself to her language study because the intellectual work had its own satisfaction. The parent-coach realizes from the beginning that the pupil will soon show superior mastery. This, too, eases the effort.

The street also runs both ways. I noted the first day the children taught me two words, when they were three years and ten months. “First they woke me up with a new song learned at school that has something raccomodé (mended). This word that I associated with the repair of machines in fact meant simply “to mend.” Then later in the day Emma handed me three small stones, saying, “Regarde, mes cailloux.” (“Look, my pebbles.”) Lazily, I had been saying “petites pierres” (“little stones”) for pebbles, until then.

Not only do the children teach me, but they have learned unconventionally and [Page 26] salubriously young that a parent’s wisdom is finite, that mommy can be wrong. Emma and Burton have begun to critique my French. They make kindly corrections of my genders and pronunciation already. Under an an pair’s tutelage, at three they dropped a false liaison in “en haut” and reminded me to do so as well. Another francophone sitter shuddered when the children articulated the “p” of “sirop.” They raced up to my second-story home office, eager for me to set her straight. I ceded to the native speaker.

Because French fluency when children are small is easy come, easy go, Friday afternoon, after a five-morning diet of school, it is at its best. I chose a Friday after noon when they were three and three quarters to ask them if they liked school. “Oh oui,” (“Oh, yes,”) said Emma. “Ces deux jours Joelle [Phillibert, a teacher] me manque et je manque à Joelle.” (“These two days I’ll miss Joelle, and she’ll miss me.”) (Emma batted her eyelashes, looked heavenward, and sighed). “Elle est si belle avec aujourd’hui ses chaussures avec des balais dessus, comme le balai dans notre cuisine, et des couettes, presque, mais plattes. Elle est ma meilleure aime.” (“She is so beautiful today with her shoes with the tassels on them, like the brooms in our kitchen, and pigtails almost, but flat. She is my best friend”) Burton chimed in, “Joelle a une jolie voix, et . . . VOILA SON AUTO!” (“Joelle has a lovely voice, and THERE’S HER CAR!”)

The first week’s stay at their grandparents’ home in Massachusetts returned the children excited over the new place, friends, and goings on, but forgetful of their French. The following visit, we rendezvoused with the grandparents on the turnpike. When I gathered the twins for good-byes, like the mother of Red Riding Hood, I had messages. But the forest they were about to enter was a secure and sunlit one. I told them to keep faith with our private language and to use the other— and public one—mindfully. “When people visit the house,” I told them, “say ‘Hello, I’m Emma,’ ‘Hello, I’m Burton.’ And there are several French records in your suitcase. Listen to them from time to time so you don’t forget your French.”

The children’s French often seeps into their spoken English. “It takes a lot of place to do the puzzle,” “Don’t talk at me!” On her fourth birthday, Emma came up with a slough of grammatical malapropisms that showed she was translating English from her weaker language, French: “I will say to Caroline, ‘It’s already past, our birthday.’” Burton appended, “I will tell Caroline I have four.”

Much less than formerly do they say “Je vois elle” (“I see she”) or “Il voit nous” (“He sees we”), instead of placing the object before the verb. However, the error persists in the most emphatic statements, as when Emma wants to find her dolly— “Je veux elle!” (“I want she!”). It is etched strongly in one heartfelt phrase Burton speaks in an outpouring of affection: “Je AIME toi” (“I love you” [second person singular, tu form]). Who could have the heart to correct him? In time, naturally, he will correct himself.

Materials

THE TWINS like picture dictionaries no matter how small the pictures and are more apt to pore over them for many minutes than any other type of book. The Cat in the Hat Dictionary in French (Random House), René Guillot’s Images et mots (Larousse), and Mon Larousse en images (Larousse) are all excellently bound and printed and “grow with” a child. Flipping to any page of any of the three, a child will find an object, action, or event represented that is apropos of his or her life at the moment.

[Page 27] Though adults who love children’s literature may instinctively focus on high-caliber literature for children, the low-cost and simpler little products are not to be scorned. It is not possible to order them by title. Someone must pick them up at a wire-rack sales outlet, supermarket, or stationery store in a French-speaking country. Ours were obtained from a Parisian friend whose son had outgrown them. Many are translations, for instance of Golden Books, but others are originals. For example, French children start on bandes dessinées (comics) at a younger age than do Americans. Emma and Burton have memorized their favorites among the lower-grade books, such as Walt Disney’s Oncle Donald et ses neveux (Deux Coqs d’Or), whence Burton became Oncle Donald for Halloween.

We have a number of Babar adventures, even Babar à New York. Babar is so popular in the American nursery that the Babar books are the one segment of Emma’s and Burton’s French cultural experience that is continually and specifically reinforced in their surroundings. We stop to wave hello to the stuffed Babar in the shop window and receive Babar-motif greeting cards from grandma.

La Fontaine’s fables, magnificent for reading aloud, are an entry point into literary language. We like the selection from Casterman, illustrated by Simone Baudoin, which dresses animals up drolly like Renaissance burghers, and the classic nineteenth-century Boutet de Monvel edition, with its double row of pictures for every fable.

The tale of that very special rabbit, Beatrix Potter’s L’Histoire de Pierre Lapin (The History of Peter Rabbit), is widely available in English-speaking countries from Frederick Warne Company. Here the translation is so jewel-like that it has become itself a classic. Astonishingly, although the twins had heard the cautionary tale a hundred times in French, and knew phrases like “thé à camomile” (“camomile tea”) and “se faufiler sous la barrière” (“to slip under the fence”) exclusively from it, when their father read them, at four years, Peter Rabbit in English, they insisted it was a “new” story.

Another case of English children’s literature where the Gallic version is tantamount to art is Le Hibou et la poussiquette, Edward Lear’s “Owl and the Pussy-Cat” translated by Francis Steegmuller. The couple dance, of course, “au clair de la lune” (“by the light of the moon”).

When a desire to associate objects with initial letters and names comes upon our children, they read not only dictionaries but a series of books so aesthetically pleasing that I am readily drawn into the perusal. Two of them are Des Fleurs et des légumes and Chez les grands (Pere Castor Flammarion). Each object, flower, or edible is framed on its own page of this small, square book.

By the time their children are four, parents should have encyclopedic books on how things work, wildlife, the city and country, and foreign lands. The dictionary carries one as far as the French for terrier and poodle, but what if the child asks what wags the tail or the name for an Afghan hound? We began with Le Livre des Mots (Deux Coqs d’Or) by Richard Scarry and now consult our several volumes of the basic beginning encyclopedia of knowledge by author-illustrator Alain Gree (five of the seventeen are Petit Atlas, La Mer, L’Automobile, L’Espace, and L’Energie).

Certain select titles for preschoolers, especially dictionaries and Babars, are imported and kept in stock in the United States by international book dealers like Rizzoli’s at 712 Fifth Avenue in New York City, NY 10019, and by the Continental Book Company at 11-03 46th Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101, a firm we find reliable and helpful. From Continental’s catalog we chose our abidingly favorite [Page 28] poetry book, 60 Poésies et 60 Comptines (Centurion). But to special-order other French books is a bother, an expense, and a time-consuming process. The surcharge on ordering a book from a New York City French-specialty bookstore can run as high as twenty dollars, and the store may not want to get it for you or be set up to do so expeditiously. Fortunately, there are exciting developments in picture books closer at hand, in French Canada. Serving as a guide are Notable Canadian Children’s Books 1976 and its 1978 supplement, prepared and distributed by the National Library of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0N4. One can also join the Communication Jeunesse, 445 Rue St. Francois-Xavier, Montreal 028, Quebec H2Y 2T1 and receive Lurulu, their journal on Quebec children’s literature.

French Canadian books emphasize wholesome virtues: family unity, cross-generational amity, tempering modernity with tradition. Drawings are often naive or cartoonlike and rendered in the brightest of colors. Nearly all are paperbacks, and the covers, too, are luminescent, clearly delineated, and striking. Texts are chastened to an admirable simplicity, and there is an overall positive feeling of experimentation about the books. French-Canadian children’s literature is manifestly in its pearly youth, and the books are fresh and of high interest.

From a French bookseller in Toronto, Editions Champlain, 107 Church Street, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2G5, we order materials new and appealing for preschoolers. Two favorites are Mado la commode and Jules le petit camion rouge, both by François Ladouceur (Fais de Beaux Rêves).

An expatriate friend, a Parisian schoolteacher, Carolyn Halfner, sometimes acts as our overseas book scout. She alerted me to the fact that French children’s songs are the rich folk counterpart of Mother Goose in English. For familiar songs we like the Folkways’ Chansons en français, in two volumes, and Sing Children Sing, Songs of France from Caedmon. More contemporary French children’s recordings have in common jazziness, melodiousness, and, very important, listenability from the adult’s vantage. Our happiest musical discovery is the six-volume, wildly fanciful Chante les mots (RCA, A. Colin Burrelier).

Our first fairy tales were a group of book-record sets of juvenile classics, Collection Peluche, from Casterman: Les Trois petits cochons and Perrault’s Le Petit chaperon rouge. Emma now spends many restful spells with the Disneyland Aladin, Cendrillon, Belle au Bois Dorman, Blanche-Neige, and Pinnochio. Blanche-Neige (Snow White) seemed too hard for her at three years and eight months, but when the Disney album cover enchanted her, I let her play it. For a month she played it daily, causing Burton actually to escape to another floor!

By restraining ourselves from any English-language purchases, we have been able to furnish a good-sized French home library of mainly records and books. We look forward in the future to a subscription to an exceptionally good children’s magazine, Pomme d’Api, 3 Rue Bayard, 75393, Paris Cedex, produced by la Joie par les livres. We shall also join the French Institute/Alliance Française Library. From it, a mailing service to any address in the United States is available to all members who pay the annual membership fee of twenty dollars. The library includes children’s books and has also a fine record collection. Applicants for membership should write to Fred J. Gitner, Librarian, FI/AF, 22 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022.

Taking A Maiden Voyage

WE HAD worked on our own language biplane. The time had come to take a maiden voyage to see how airworthy it would be. Practical considerations and ties [Page 29] of friendship made Quebec a first choice. Getting to know our French Canadian au pairs and their friends had given the twins a tacit knowledge of their culture. We wanted this to become active. The children were convinced that Canadian butter, syrup, jam, and salmon were the best. They found feuilles d’érable (maple leaves) on postage stamps and, thanks to color-coding, could “read” the denominations of Canadian paper money. Paris had cachet, especially around vacation time at school when many families traveled home, but Quebec had an immediacy. Chantal and Nicole had gone back and forth by train and bus for a weekend or week, to be with family, or even for an appointment at the doctor’s. Emma and Burton sensed that Quebec was foreign but “not too.”

The guests from Quebec in our home paid attention not to use dialect with the children. Would Emma and Burton be able to understand joual (a slang sometimes used in Quebec)? To see, we reckoned, ça serait du fun! (That would be some fun!) I felt the second language was an exotic graft onto the children’s trees. I watched it with special affection. I anticipated its bloom.

We decided to enter Quebec the way Chris had as a child—grandly, with a short stay in Quebec City, the most French of Canada’s cities, at the world-renowned Château de Frontenac. Having the twins’ first foreign experience center on a hotel had a special appeal to me, remembering my own travels with my family abroad in Europe in the late 1950s. It evoked the tradition of the grand tour. Moreover, a fine hotel is by definition filled with local people whose business is being courteous and helpful. The twins could get their bearings in the hotel, whereas to know a city even superficially takes so much longer.

On the outside an imposing fortress, the Château Frontenac is on the inside a cheerful village. The hotel has shops and restaurants, ballrooms and conference halls, and wide promenades. We glimpsed several weddings and in the lobby danced with a party to the music of a band of strolling players. The Château Frontenac has its guilds of electricians and plumbers, cooks and bakers, launderers and locksmiths—tradespeople who work only for the hotel. Many spoke French only and were the principal, affable conversants for our children. Contrary to what we had feared, we found no problems understanding native speakers.

In Le Café, with a little prompting, the twins ordered for themselves. Our simple breakfast came a dressed-up affair on pretty china. The pancake syrup was a frothing and golden local product, and a basket of croissants came with a plate of butter curls and an array of confitures.

The children’s first croissant occasioned an invitation to the hotel’s bakery. There croissant dough was proofing in long sheets, and the loaves for the night’s canapes were emerging from the ovens. Emma and Burton had a hand at rolling out dough. They also grasped the four-foot wooden paddle as a baker lifted the done loaves from the oven to a counter to cool. In French-Canadian style the bakers bid “Bonjour” (“Good day”) instead of “Au revoir” (“Goodbye”) after showing us about.

The children liked the hotel room tremendously and loved to pick out our room, on the fifteenth floor of the great tower, from afar. On elevator ascents and descents they read their first French words in a public place: “RC” (rez-de-chaussée) (ground floor) and “SS” (sous-sol) (basement) on the panel of buttons. French really works, they discovered.

The room itself proved versatile for play. The luggage racks were made into lean-tos and race courses for toy cars. The walk-in closet became a playhouse. [Page 30] Emma thought it was great fun tuning in to a French television station. Burton spent long spells standing on a luggage table at the window watching the boats in the harbor.

The excitement of a new environment definitely stimulated the twins’ French. So did the smiling faces and the unhurried manner of life. When a high wind began spraying us with water, Emma enjoyed running with the other tourists from the Montmorency Falls. Burton called out the colors of the brightly painted farmhouses as we drove around picturesque Île d’Orleans. For the most part, though, their fuses for sightseeing were short, their patience with watching and listening to people long. The favorite event was the ferry ride across the St. Lawrence River and back, because the boat was full of French-speaking children, and we met a friendly couple with a chat tigré (tabby) in a cage.

At the trip’s conclusion Chris remarked to the children he was pleased with the way they had spoken French to people. Emma’s answer attests she had not seen this as a challenge at all. “Yes, Daddy,” she said brightly, “we’ve been learning half of our good French to you. Now, est-ce que tu peux dire POMME?” (“Now, can you say applesauce?”)

The House

Going past the house I remember—

Decaying windows half-replaced

by boards inched up from the sill.

Half-awake early in the morning,

I saw them from the bus.

First one, then four people

before the windowshade closed.

They sat there, staring,

faces blank with waiting.

They were there every morning,

a mahogany carving:

passive faces and

vacant eyes that watched.

Riding by the deserted house—

I remember.

—Jocelyn Boor

[Page 31]

We Can Solve Urban Problems

BY ALEXANDER GARVIN

“GULLIES, holes, ruts . . . kerbstones rising from two to six inches above the level of slatternly pavement . . . building materials scattered half across the street . . . drunken lampposts with twisted irons, and . . . a generous scatter of filth.” That is not a contemporary description of the South Bronx. It is Rudyard Kipling writing in 1892 about another New York slum. “One of these days,” he goes on to say, “everything will be taken in hand and put straight. The unvirtuous rulers of the city will be swept away by a cyclone . . . of popular indignation . . . and criminal neglect will miraculously disappear.”

Yet, in the eighth decade of the twentieth century, there are still areas with “drunken lampposts” and “a generous scatter of filth.” But no one any longer says that “one of these days everything will be taken in hand and put straight.” After multi-billion dollar efforts to create model cities and to win the war on poverty most people no longer believe things can be put straight. Instead, they lament that “Fine neighborhoods are destroyed. For what? Glass boxes!?” or that “We’ve tried. It doesn’t work. Besides, it’s too expensive.” Apparently it is acceptable for millions to live in places like the South Bronx.

“Criminal neglect” continues because we cannot decide what to do about urban problems. Some people are concerned with the problems of a particular place: downtown areas, industrial districts, or slums. Others believe urban problems cannot be confined to specific physical locations and think instead in terms of social, economic, or political issues. Many, unable to choose among competing constituencies, sit on the sidelines wringing their hands, while others, convinced of the stupidity of throwing good money after bad, just sit on their hands. Thus there is a consensus neither on which problems to tackle nor how to tackle them.

In fact, we do know how to solve urban problems. It is precisely for this reason that many once critical problems no longer exist. In the nineteenth century, fires that destroyed entire sections of cities were a major problem. Most of central Chicago was burned to the ground in 1871; Seattle, in 1889. Charleston suffered major conflagrations in 1740, 1778, 1796, 1838, and 1861. Today a succession of fire and building codes ensures that fires can be contained long enough to allow well-equipped fire departments to prevent wholesale destruction. Neither are we plagued by epidemics of yellow fever, cholera, small pox, or other contagious diseases because of the effectiveness of public health and building regulations.

Cities across the country, often ignorant of actions elsewhere, continue to tackle tough problems and to solve them. It matters little whether they try to deal with decaying downtowns, obsolete industrial districts, or slums; whether they lower or increase densities, separate or integrate land uses, create wholly new environments or preserve existing neighborhoods —just as it matters little whether they serve the poor, assist business, provide for the middle class, or help some other interest group. They have been successful whatever their vision of the good city and whomever they sought to help.

Most people are familiar with a few very famous projects, such as Philadelphia’s Society Hill or Boston’s Quincy Market. Unfortunately, they are not aware that equally successful [Page 32] projects can be found in cities large and small in every region of the country. When they come to know how many successful efforts there have been at revitalizing downtowns, restoring manufacturing districts, eliminating slums, fighting poverty, and solving every manner of urban problem, there may well be a “cyclone . . . of poular indignation” demanding an end to “criminal neglect.”

Revitalizing Downtown

DURING the 1930s and 1940s Pittsburgh was flooded almost every year; raw sewage polluted surrounding rivers; traffic congestion choked downtown business; and smoke blanketed the city much of the time, blackening laundry, buildings, and almost everything else. In an effort to alter the situation activist businessmen under the leadership of Richard King Mellon entered into an alliance with the Democratic political machine of Mayor David Lawrence. The result was legislation revising smoke control ordinances, construction of sewage treatment plants, a county transit and traffic commission that built highways and bridges, a public parking authority that erected municipal garages, and the complete reconstruction of the triangle at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio. This strategic downtown core had been a clutter of obsolete railroad yards and rundown lofts. It became the Golden Triangle, a waterfront park surrounded by over $100 million of privately financed commercial construction. Surely, this Pittsburgh Renaissance constitutes successful downtown redevelopment.

When business and political leaders in Minneapolis formed a Downtown Council in 1955, the city was suffering from a familiar litany of ills: declining retail sales, declining downtown office occupancy, and a declining tax base. The explanation was easy. A rapidly increasing suburban population preferred the cleanliness and convenience of a short drive on new highways to patronize modern shopping centers. By 1956 they could even avoid the harsh climate by going to Southdale, America’s first air-conditioned shopping mall. The Downtown Council initially financed an evaluation of new highways and went on to a comprehensive study of the entire downtown area.

Instead of leveling the area, their plan called for a new pedestrian environment to compete with the suburbs. By 1962 the first part ofa system of climate-controlled skyways had been installed. These second-story skyways bridged garages, retail facilities, and office buildings, thus allowing pedestrians to stroll and shop, whatever the weather, at all times of the year. Bus routes were rearranged to provide direct service to retailing and jobs. The key to this pedestrian environment was the redesigning of Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis’ main shopping street. In Lawrence Halprin’s design for the new pedestrianized Nicollet Mall private cars and trucks were banished; sidewalks were widened and lined with street trees, benches, bus shelters, and sculpture; and a sinuously undulating two-lane roadway was created exclusively for buses and taxis. When Nicollet Mall opened in 1967, there were only nine thousand daily shoppers downtown. Today, there are over forty thousand. More than $225 million in private new construction has been stimulated.

By the late 1960s Seattle’s commercial activity had shifted northward, away from Pioneer Square, the city’s original downtown. When this eighteen-block area had been rebuilt after the fire of 1889, it was admired as one of the handsomest business districts in the country. In those days Pioneer Square provided a sharp contrast to bordering Yesler Way. Known as “skid road,” Yesler Way had been used for skidding logs down the hill to Henry Yesler’s mill below on Elliott Bay, thus providing America’s “skid row” label for any seedy section of town that attracted drunks, derelicts, and panhandlers. By 1970 Pioneer Square and “skid row” were indistinguishable.

When planners proposed replacing this decaying area with modern high-rise office buildings, community residents objected, calling instead for restoration. They successfully forced the city to declare Pioneer Square an historic district; to rebuild and restore streets, parks, and street furniture; and to appoint a district [Page 33]

[Page 34] manager with the job of ensuring proper maintenance. Within six years entrepreneurs had rehabilitated most buildings in Pioneer Square, employment had jumped from one thousand to six thousand, and tax assessments were up 450 percent.

Restoring Manufacturing Districts

WHAT about obsolete industrial areas? For years manufacturing firms have been drawn away from cities to large vacant sites in the suburbs —sites with ample room for horizontal production lines on a single story, sites far from the city’s congested traffic and easily accessible by highways, sites with a great deal of room for truck loading and worker parking. There are two primary solutions for obsolete manufacturing areas: (1) admitting their functional obsolescence and adapting them to new uses or (2) duplicating in the city the conditions that draw firms away from the city.

“Adaptive re-use” of older lofts and warehouses has resurrected ailing manufacturing areas in San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; New York; and many other cities. In San Francisco the conversion of the Ghiardelli chocolate factory into a complex of stores and restaurants spurred similar conversions of the Del Monte fruit and vegetable cannery and other buildings. It turned the surrounding area, Fisherman’s Wharf, into one of San Francisco’s premier tourist attractions. But these conversions happened without government intervention. Are there ways in which government can reproduce such successes? Indeed there are.

Along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., there were also many underutilized or empty industrial buildings. When shipping by canal was no longer attractive, the reasons for locating along the canal disappeared, and building users moved away or went out of business. In the early 1970s Canal Square Associates converted one of these nineteenth-century structures into an office building and shopping center. Their success spurred the government to [Page 35] rebuild and landscape the debris-strewn C & O Canal, a notorious gathering place for derelicts. Developers attracted by this major public capital improvement have converted nearly every older building into condominium apartments, new retail outlets, or offices.

Using government expenditures on capital improvements is only one way to restore a decaying, obsolete manufacturing district. Another is to use tax incentives to encourage adaptive reuse.

Between the Second World War and the mid-1970s, New York City lost one-half million industrial jobs, mostly in Manhattan. As a result there were vacant and underutilized lofts throughout lower Manhattan, South of Houston Street (SOHO). Industrial firms could not survive in obsolete multistory structures built before the turn of the century. Artists began using these vacant buildings as studios and were followed by pioneers who converted whole floors into large unconventional apartments. To encourage this trend, in 1975 the city introduced a tax incentive, called J-51 after its section number in the city’s Administrative Code. Enacted in 1955, it originally provided benefits only for the elimination of unsafe or unhealthy conditions in tenements. In 1975, J-51 was extended to the conversion of nonresidential space into multiple dwellings. Since then over twelve thousand converted apartments have received J-51 benefits. SOHO has been transformed into a lively area of apartments, art galleries, boutiques, and restaurants. The program has been so successful that the city has cut back benefits.

Instead of accepting the loss of manufacturing jobs and converting old buildings to new uses, Detroit selected the second strategy: duplicating the conditions that drew the firms away. When Chrysler closed its five million square foot Dodge Main Assembly Plant in 1980, and General Motors was about to follow suit with its Cadillac Plant, the city offered to take the steps necessary to keep GM, which needed hundreds of acres, in Detroit. There [Page 36] was no way to assemble a parcel that size privately, and the Dodge main plant site was too small. Hence Detroit used its powers of eminent domain to condemn enough property surrounding the GM plant for a suitable site and thus retained Cadillac. The project is now under way and promises to save thousands of jobs.

Eliminating Slums

THE BATTLE with the slum goes back to the nineteenth century. Reformers like Jacob Riis felt that “bad environment becomes the heredity of the next generation.” How can one fight slums? They can be cleared and replaced with decent housing, or there can be selective demolition and reconstruction. More recent efforts have concentrated on a third alternative—rehabilitation.

One of the most successful clearance projects is the Southwest Urban Renewal Area in Washington, D.C. It was conceived in response to the Housing Act of 1949, which offered two-thirds of the subsidy required to provide private developers with attractive cleared sites at reasonable prices plus the low-cost, long-term financing necessary to build marketable new housing on these sites. In 1952 Washington’s Redevelopment Agency proposed a plan for the Southwest quadrant of the city. The 560 acres selected contained 5,600 housing units (1,000 of which were existing public housing) and 23,500 residents, mostly black. Their living conditions were dreadful: 43 percent used outside toilets; 44 percent had no bath; 70 percent no central heat; 21 percent no electricity. Although more than one-fourth of the families remained in the Southwest, living in public housing bordering the project area, most former [Page 37] residents could not afford to return. They did, however, move to substantially better housing. A study published fourteen years after the plan was announced found that 96 percent of those relocated lived in apartments with toilets and bathrooms, 94 percent had central heat, and all had electricity.

Very few renewal projects combine rehabilitation with new construction. The most important are Society Hill in Philadelphia, the West Side Urban Renewal Project in New York City, and Wooster Square in New Haven. Wooster Square was a 235-acre neighborhood centered around a charming landscaped green created in 1825. Originally, it had been a fashionable resort, attracting families from the South who traveled by boat from New Orleans and Charleston to spend their summers in New Haven. As the city grew, factories sprang up, and the resort began to change into a working-class community—first Irish and later Italian-American. Single-family homes were converted into two- and three-family dwellings.

Conditions deteriorated sufficiently so that, by the 1950s, the city’s dynamic mayor, Richard C. Lee, and his renewal director, Edward Logue, decided to declare Wooster Square an Urban Renewal Area. In 1957, after more than two years of study, they proposed a plan that combined the clearance of 750 structures with the rehabilitation of 560. In addition, the plan envisioned a new school, a new firehouse, numerous small parks and landscaped residential parking lots, 350 new street trees, and scattered clusters of new low-rise housing. Today, Wooster Square is one of New Haven’s most attractive neighborhoods. The Italian-American community is still there, but their homes have been rehabilitated. This was possible because the Housing Act of 1954 made rehabilitation projects in renewal areas eligible for FHA mortgage insurance. Thus former rooming houses could be reconverted to row house apartments or single-family homes and existing housing brought to modern standards. The Wooster Square Project proved that urban renewal [Page 38] could be achieved without displacing a community or putting up buildings that were out of character with the neighborhood.

One of the most successful rehabilitation efforts took place in New York City when, in 1973, Mayor John V. Lindsay established a Neighborhood Preservation Program for five areas. In one of them, Washington Heights, the program has been a resounding success.

Washington Heights is the northern portion of Manhattan Island, extending from 155th Street to the Harlem River. In 1970 approximately 180,000 people lived in the neighborhood. Fifteen percent were black; nine percent Hispanic. Eleven percent were on welfare, a figure lower than the city average. When Washington Heights was designated a Neighborhood Preservation Area, there was almost no abandonment. Nevertheless, much of the housing stock was deteriorating, and banks were no longer making new mortgage loans.

The city established a mortgage insurance corporation to guarantee bank rehabilitation loans, provided additional below-market interest loan funds to guarantee an adequate level of rehabilitation without major increases in debt service, suspended rent regulations in order to reestablish post-rehabilitation rents on an economical basis, and guaranteed federal rent subsidies for all existing tenants who would otherwise have been unable to afford post-rehabilitation rents. To coordinate these and all other housing efforts in the neighborhood, the city opened a local Neighborhood Preservation Office. The city’s commercial and saving banks responded by creating the Community Preservation Corporation to make rehabilitation loans in the Neighborhood Preservation Areas, pledging all necessary capital for this rehabilitation, and by hiring loan officers who would work together With the local Neighborhood Preservation Office.

The program worked. Between 1975 and 1981 banks provided $24,000,000 in new moderate rehabilitation mortgages for the restoration of 3,700 apartments; the city provided an additional $11,000,000 for the moderate rehabilitation of another 1,300 units; and the federal government, $28,000,000 for the substantial rehabilitation of another 600. The local Neighborhood Preservation Office also negotiated with landlords to achieve an estimated $2,000,000 in repairs to 16,000 apartments.

There are many reasons for the Neighborhood Preservation Program’s success in Washington Heights. The area’s apartment houses were not pre-1920 tenements built to the minimum legal standard and thus inappropriate for moderate renovation. Deferred maintenance was not excessive; hence additional mortgage payments to cover rehabilitation did not require excessive rent increases. Most of the area’s residents were paying less than 20 percent of income for rent and could afford to pay more. Landlords were still interested in long-term earnings and were not yet selling to sharks ready to milk the properties until they could be abandoned. These were all necessary preconditions for success. The two critical elements proved to be the new private lending institution created to make rehabilitation loans in Neighborhood Preservation Areas and the dedicated municipal staff located in Washington Heights.

Fighting Poverty

TWO STRATEGIES have been successfully used to combat urban poverty: creating jobs and providing services. The jobs strategy has been derided as “leaf raking.” Yet in cities across the country work-relief paid for long overdue public improvements.

In his first three years as New York City’s Parks Commissioner, Robert Moses proved that the jobs strategy can leave a mighty mark on a city. He spent over $136,000,000 in federal funds to employ an army of 69,000 relief workers. They built 265 playgrounds, 3 zoos, 12 Olympic-size swimming pools, 8 golf courses, and 2 major public beach complexes. This more than tripled the city’s neighborhood recreation facilities and went a long way toward meeting the recreation needs of its seven million residents.

San Antonio also used the jobs strategy to eliminate a major urban problem. In 1920 the San Antonio River flooded, killing fifty-one people and causing $3,000,000 in damage. Engineers [Page 39] proposed channeling the river into an underground sewer and paving it over with a highway. Citizens responded by creating the San Antonio Conservation Society and stopping the project. They proposed reconstructing the river bed and incorporating all property within a one-half block radius into a new park. Until the New Deal there were no funds for this ambitious project. The Work Projects Administration combined $350,000 with a $75,000 city bond issue to pay for the new Riverwalk. Within eighteen months of the ground breaking, in 1939, San Antonio had a twenty-one-block park consisting of stone retaining walls, picturesque pedestrian bridges and walks, and landscaped banks. In time the warehouses and lofts along the Riverwalk became boutiques and restaurants. Today, the Riverwalk is one of San Antonio’s major tourist attractions.

Perhaps the least popular and, at the same time, the most effective services strategy is public housing. Created by the Housing Act of 1937, it provides decent shelter for 1.3 million households at rents far below what can be produced in the private sector. Since, by definition, private developers try to maximize profit and, therefore, must obtain rents sufficient to cover taxes, debt service, and maintenance and operating costs, there is no way for them to produce housing at a price that does not cover minimum costs. Local housing authorities established to build low-rent public housing can do so because profit is eliminated, local taxes are nominal, and debt service is paid through annual contributions from the federal government. The tenant essentially pays for maintenance.

Popular myth notwithstanding, public housing need not be dormitory stockade. Public housing is but a financing scheme that can produce fine buildings where there is a desire to do so. Woodside Gardens in San Francisco and Williamsburg Houses in New York, for example, are highlighted in architectural guidebooks to their cities.

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[Page 41] Public housing has been successful where a professional staff free of political patronage appointees has been able to develop thoughtful tenant selection procedures, adopt proper project management procedures, avoid deferring repairs and maintenance, and invest in the rehabilitation of older projects on an ongoing basis. Where local housing authorities are properly run, there are waiting lists to get in. In New York City, for example, over 150,000 families apply in vain for the 8,500 apartments that turn over annually. In fact, the only decent housing in much of the Bronx is public housing, a bastion of decency in a sea of dilapidated apartment houses and vacant lots abandoned by private landlords.

Defining the Problem

THOSE who argue that urban problems are specific to particular places and those who argue that they cannot be confined by geography are both right. They are right because urban problems, while unique to city locations, always involve more than a single issue and thus cannot be solved with single-issue programs. Had Pittsburgh implemented antipollution regulations but not dealt with traffic congestion and redeveloped the Triangle, or vice versa, there would have been no Renaissance. Similarly, had New York’s Neighborhood Preservation Program only dealt with the economics of mortgage financing and not provided for the small percentage of tenants who could not afford restructured rents, there would have been no rehabilitation.

They are also right because urban problems unique to a particular city cannot be dealt with outside their regional context. Thus the planners of Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall and skyways were successful because they understood what needed to be done to compete with emerging patterns of suburban shopping, just as Detroit could retain Cadillac by providing conditions competitive with other plant locations.

In the end, dealing with urban problems means considering physical, environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political aspects all at once. Pioneer Square worked because the buildings were suitable for renovation, because public works could clear up environmental problems, because there was a market for additional tourist attractions and commercial space in Seattle, because the area was filled with culturally significant structures, because a group of dedicated preservationists was interested in the area, and because clearance projects had become a political liability. Take away any of these factors and the rejuvenation of Pioneer Square might never have occurred.

Given the comprehensive nature of urban problems, it is not surprising that our views of them constantly change. During the Depression the focus was on the economy. In the 1950s we were concerned with the flight of the middle class to the suburbs and the resulting decline in retail sales and in the cities’ tax bases. In the 1960s attention was redirected from decaying downtowns toward riot-torn poverty areas. By the 1970s priorities had shifted from poverty areas to the preservation of transitional neighborhoods. Unfortunately, just as we learn how to deal successfully with a problem our attention shifts.

The Ingredients of Success

THE DISAGREEMENT over urban problems is as honest as it is real. But as long as we fail to agree on what our problems are and which are important enough to require immediate attention, they will remain unsolved. Assuming we could agree and were willing to pay the bill, what are the ingredients of success? The preservation of the Ansonborough area of Charleston illustrates them beautifully.

In the early 1960s, the Historic Charleston Foundation inaugurated a campaign to preserve decaying Ansonborough, a seven-block area with over 135 antebellum structures. Most were vacant, and most were dilapidated. It acquired over fifty buildings, sometimes restoring facades, rarely restoring interiors, and always reselling properties with preservation covenants. It worked. Today Ansonborough is a showpiece with a tax base that has more than doubled.

The Historic Charleston Foundation demonstrated that private investment could be attracted [Page 42] to transform a deteriorated neighborhood into a healthy one. It also proved that the unique character of an historic district could be preserved at relatively low cost by a private agency.

Why was the Historic Charleston Foundation successful? Its diagnosis was clear: existing property owners were either uninterested or unable to restore their buildings, mortgage financing was inadequate or nonexistent, and residents were ignorant of the value and methods of maintaining the historic character of the area. Its prescription flowed from the diagnosis: acquire properties, finance their restoration, and resell with maintenance covenants. Finally, the Historic Charleston Foundation could implement that prescription on its own. It needed no political consensus beyond its membership and had to persist only long enough to treat a significant number of structures. From then on the market would take care of itself. It was a solution well within their means.

Any city can solve urban problems, just as Charleston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and cities across the country have been doing. But for a city to put things “straight” its leaders must agree on the problems they are prepared to tackle. Since their priorities are likely to change with the times, their activities must be realizable within the duration of the political consensus for dealing with that problem. But whatever the problem, the ingredients of success are the same: (1) clarity in the diagnosis of the problem; (2) a prescription that can be exccuted within the constraints of available resources without paying unreasonable non-dollar costs (for example, relocation of families and businesses, destruction of the neighborhood fabric, elimination of the community’s cultural heritage); and (3) an effective implementation vehicle.

Knowledge of the many successful solutions to urban problems should bring a “cyclone of popular indignation” that will sweep away cynicism over the impossibility of solving urban problems and with it the so-called leaders whose neglect is indeed criminal. However, urban problems will not have “miraculously” disappeared. For that to happen we must become skilled in the integrated process of their diagnosis, prescription, and treatment. Only then will we finally be able to “take things in hand and set them straight.”

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Some Reflections on Racial Unity

A REVIEW OF GAYLE MORRISON’S To Move the World: Louis C. Gregory and the Advancement of Racial Unity in America (WILMETTE: BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING TRUST, 1982), 321 PAGES, NOTES, INDEX

BY NOSRATOLLAH RASSEKH

FROM THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY to the nineteenth, in the largest forced migration in history, some nineteen million Africans were brought to the Americas. Of that number approximately 350,000 were imported into what is now the United States before slave trade was prohibited in 1808.

Slavery in British-America was originally instituted not by law but by force and custom. But law quickly formed an alliance with custom. Slavery was officially legalized in New England in 1641 and in Virginia in 1660. All the colonies set up slave codes and measures against slave insurrections. In 1669 in Virginia Negroes were classified as “property,” in 1690 South Carolina used the label “real estate,” and by 1740 in all southern colonies they were designated as “chattel.” Negroes were not “persons” and so could hold no property, have no family, nor expect any legal rights. They were possessions to be bought, sold, and used. Even churches recognized neither the slave’s existence nor his marriage.

For the free Negro, too, discrimination long preceded legal definition. Even in New England, Massachusetts passed a law in 1656 barring blacks and Indians from the militia. Connecticut followed in 1660, though as late as 1680 there were only thirty blacks in the colony, hardly a physical threat to the whites. The same colony in 1717 legislated that no Negro could hold land. Fourteen years earlier Massachusetts had required them to post bonds, and in 1705 it prohibited sexual relations between the races.

After the United States achieved independence, its Constitution contained three clauses indicating that blacks were never intended to be included in the “melting pot”: (1) A slave was 3/5 of a person; (2) Congress was prohibited from interfering with slave trade for twenty years; and (3) fugitive slaves were to be returned to their masters in their home states. Not until after the Civil War was the Constitution amended to give blacks equal rights to freedom, due process, and voting, and yet the amendments to the Constitution did not end legal discrimination because far more than the restoration of “Union” was involved in it. For some Americans the war was fought as much for the destruction of slavery as for the preservation of the Union. They had hoped that the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 would be only the first step in a great moral revolution that would guarantee the equality of all men. The historian Allan Nevins has observed that

The war, when it came, was not primarily a conflict over State Rights, although that issue had become involved in it. It was not primarily a war born of economic grievances, although many Southerners had been led to think that they were suffering, or would soon suffer, economic wrongs. It was not a war created by politicians or publicists who fomented hysteric excitement; for while hysteria was important, we have always to ask what basic reasons made possible the propaganda which aroused it. It was not primarily about slavery alone, although that institution seemed to many the grand cause. It was a war over slavery and the future position of the Negro race in North America. Was the Negro to be allowed, as a result of the shift of power signalized by [Page 44] Lincoln’s election, to take the first step toward an ultimate position of general economic, political, and social equality with the white man? Or was he to be held immobile in a degraded, servile position, unchanging for the next hundred years as it had remained essentially unchanged for the hundred years past?

Unfortunately, the assumptions about the equal rights of blacks in American society were never universally believed in or upheld. For the majority of white Americans there were too many racial, sociological, psychological, and economic barriers to be overcome in order to accept blacks as their equals. Abraham Lincoln himself, in a memorable speech at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, commented on his sentiments about the blacks in America: “What next? Freedom, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people would not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equal.” Haywood Burns, a social commentator and critic, has commented that “America has always been a separatist society. Whether by slave trade, the lash, the lynch mob, Jim Crow laws or subtle, covert discrimination, white separatism has held the black man apart from full or equal participation in this society.”

When, in the wake of the ideological excitement that followed the Civil War, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were added to the national charter, it seemed that the ideologists had completed their social revolution. The Thirteenth Amendment had already legally ended slavery in the United States; now in the eyes of the Constitution former slaves were full citizens, equal before the law, and in possession of the ballot. The Reconstruction period was to be the first attempt to carve out a place for blacks in a white-dominated America. But when Reconstruction turned to social revolution, it followed the course of many revolutions and subsided in reaction. It failed because the realities of American attitudes had been ignored. With the cessation of hostilities no racial peace emerged. Slavery had been abolished, but the race problem remained. Before the ink was dry on the document of surrender signed at Appomattox by Generals Lee and Grant, the “black codes” of southern states loudly proclaimed that whites were not about to change their racial views even in defeat. Black Codes granted freedmen certain civil rights—to make contracts, to sue and be sued in regular state courts, and to be secure in person and estate. But they imposed many restrictions on the freedom of southern Negroes. In most states blacks were forbidden to carry weapons without a license or to be witnesses in courts against whites. Interracial marriages were prohibited. Magistrates were given wide discretion in ordering Negroes to be held as vagrant and in assigning them to the highest bidder to work out fines. Blacks were severely circumscribed in their right to work since licenses were required for mechanical or trade jobs. All Negroes of age were taxed to provide paupers’ funds for their own race. In Mississippi all black orphans up to the age of eighteen were to be attached to a white person—preferably their former masters —to be fed, clothed, and so on until freed at the age of twenty-one (for males) and eighteen (for females).

The Reconstruction period officially ended with the Compromise of 1877. President Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South. Enthusiasm for social justice gave way to enthusiasm for big business. Economic opportunities and material gains had brought about a political deal through which Negroes were totally forgotten. This was due not only to the death [Page 45] or retirement of many of the chief leaders of the crusading days but also to the defeat of others at the polls.

In 1878 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a Louisiana statute that prohibited discrimination in transportation. The Congress, it ruled, has constitutional jurisdiction over interstate commerce. In a number of civil rights cases in 1883 the Court virtually reversed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had guaranteed blacks full enjoyment of accommodations on public conveyances. In 1896 in Plessy vs. Ferguson the Court accepted, by implication, the principle of “separate but equal” school facilities. Thus school segregation on the basis of race was upheld as constitutional. Only Justice M. Harlon, a former slave owner, saw in that decision the betrayal of the Fourteenth Amendment. “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country,” he observed, “and so it is, in prestige, in achievement, in education, in wealth, and in power. . . . But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law there is in this country no superior, ruling class citizen. . . . Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates class among citizens.” But his was a lonely voice. Jim Crow laws had very effectively negated any social or political advancement that black Americans had made during Reconstruction.

One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation the race issue still dominated all others in America. America had fought in two world wars to “make the world safe for democracy” and “to guarantee” the right of people to choose their own government. Four hundred thousand blacks had served in the first one and a million in the second. Yet there was segregation and discrimination in the Army, Navy, Marines, U.S.O., service clubs, and even the Red Cross. From 1940 to 1943, while America was fighting the Nazis, seventeen blacks were lynched, and there were violent race riots in Los Angeles, Beaumont, Mobile, New York, and Detroit, where twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed. Under a “V for Victory” sign in a bus in Charleston, South Carolina, there was the advice, “Victory demands your cooperation . . . Avoid friction. Be patriotic. White passengers will be seated from front to rear, colored passengers from rear to front.”

No wonder, then, that some blacks did not feel a part of American society. One black educator’s comment that “Our war is not against Hitler in Europe, but against the Hitlers in America” found many nodding their heads in agreement. A black sharecropper, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor told his landlord, “By the way, Captain, I hear the Japs done declare War on you white folks.”

Under the circumstances the most significant fact was that the overwhelming majority of black Americans did remain loyal to their country. During the First World War, W. E. B. DuBois asked the Negroes to set aside their grievances and rally to the war effort. During the Second World War, Joe Louis expressed the sentiments of many blacks when he said, “America has got lots of problems, but Hitler won’t fix them.”

The Second World War, however, was a significant turning point in American race relations. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt prohibited discrimination in defense industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission. During the war blacks did share economic opportunities, and millions migrated from the South to the North and the West, radically changing the nation’s racial map. Overseas experiences made them unwilling to accept discrimination, and the fate of six million Jews and its lesson was not lost on them. In 1947 President Truman desegregated the Armed Forces, and the Supreme Court’s decision in 1954 (Brown v. Topeka School Board) ordering the desegregation of schools marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the “melting pot.” But a decade after the ruling the pace of integration made [Page 46] a mockery of the court-ordered “all deliberate speed.” At the University of Mississippi, Governor Ross Barnett tried to block the admission of James Meredith; and Governor George Wallace of Alabama stood in the doorway —as he had promised—to stop two black students from entering the state university. The riots in Watts, Newark, Detroit, and almost every other major American city in the mid-1960s gave testimony to the fact that court decisions, governmental legislation, and educational efforts had not been able to break down the barriers of discrimination and prejudice. Other ethnic groups (Indians, Chicanos, Chinese, Filipinos) remaining in their racial enclaves also found that racism persisted and that they were not welcomed into the Great Crucible. They felt that they had to fight their way in.

The relative calm of the 1970s and of the present time should not be taken as a sign of racial reconciliation. True, the series of the civil rights laws passed in the 1960s were calculated to make more explicit the fundamental guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment; but the fact that they were needed speaks for itself. The climate has been ripe for separation and nationalism among the ethnic minorities; and, as Paul Jacob and Saul London observed, what America is witnessing is a new kind of clustering of ethnic groups, who are perhaps frightened of being isolated from that which is familiar and reassuring. “In a society that seems to be spinning apart, one’s own special identity becomes essential to survival.” Jacob and London questioned whether this country ever meant to become a truly great melting pot. As the United States celebrated its two hundredth anniversary, others were also wondering whether all the different groups that settled in America would be able to establish one nation. Was it not Mark Twain who once observed that the only feature of “The American Character” that he had ever discovered was a fondness for ice water?

SET against this panorama of racial confrontation and tension, Gayle Morrison’s book To Move the World: Louis C. Gregory and the Advancement of Racial Unity in America is indeed refreshing reading. For it is the biography of a man who, heroically, by the power of his faith rose above racial barriers and spent a fruitful lifetime in spreading the message of the oneness of humanity to Americans, particularly in the South.

He became a Bahá’í in 1909 and almost immediately wrote a letter to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the Founder of the Faith. In answering that letter ‘Abdu’l-Bahá outlined His extraordinary expectations for the role Louis Gregory could play in race relations:

“I hope that thou mayest become . . . the means whereby the white and colored people shall close their eyes to racial differences and behold the reality of humanity, and that is the universal unity which is the oneness of the kingdom of the human race, the basic harmony of the world and the appearance of the bounty of the Almighty.” (p. 7)

Both ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and later His grandson Shoghi Effendi considered race prejudice as America’s most vital problem and its most challenging issue. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that the tranquility of the whole world depended on the coming together of the whites and the blacks; Shoghi Effendi linked racial unity in America to the cause of world peace and considered the development of the Bahá’í Faith among black Americans as a part of a general spiritual “‘upsurge’” of the nonwhite peoples of the world prerequisite to the establishment of the new World Order (pp. 267, 311). “The most challenging issue” could not, naturally, be resolved easily, but it had to be resolved before there could be world peace and world order. The power of spirit, Bahá’ís were convinced, would bring about the transformation of the human heart. Meanwhile, as Shoghi Effendi explained, special attributes were required. In The Advent of Divine Justice, in December 1938, he wrote to the American Bahá’ís:

Let neither [black or white Bahá’ís] think that they can wait confidently for the solution of this [racial] problem until the initiative [Page 47] has been taken, and the favorable circumstances created, by agencies that stand outside the orbit of their Faith. Let neither think that anything short of genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate trust, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort, can succeed in blotting out the stain which this patent evil has left on the fair name of their common country. Let them rather believe, and be firmly convinced, that on their mutual understanding, their amity, and sustained cooperation, must depend, more than on any other force or organization operating outside the circle of their Faith, the deflection of that dangerous course so greatly feared by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and the materialization of the hopes He cherished for their joint contribution to the fulfillment of that country’s glorious destiny. (p. 269)

Louis Gregory considered the endeavor to unify the races as an injunction, and for the next forty years of his life he directed his enormous energies toward that goal. In 1909, at the age of thirty-five, he turned “his back on a secure economic position as a lawyer within the small elite of black professionals” and with an unflinching determination tried to bridge “in his own upbringing the formidable chasm of legal and de facto segregation that separated black and white Americans in his day” (p. 7, 3).

The task required iron will as well as profound faith because Louis Gregory’s lifetime paralleled the most violent era in the history of racial tension in the United States. He was born on 6 June 1874 in Charleston, South Carolina—three years before the end of Reconstruction —and passed away on 30 July 1951— three years before the Brown vs. Topeka school desegregation decision. The period witnessed the height of Jim Crow laws, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, and the worst racial riots and racial killing. From 1900 to 1914 there were eleven hundred lynchings in the United States. But Louis Gregory did have profound faith and iron will. Many other black leaders, disillusioned and dismayed by what they saw, called for separatism or black nationalism, but he, in his extensive traveling and eloquent talks, preached the message of unity to both races. He was, indeed, as Shoghi Effendi wrote, “‘One who saw beyond the barriers and lived for . . . [mankind’s] wholeness and interdependence’” (p. 312). When W. E. B. DuBois accused the American Bahá’í community of having succumbed to racial compromise, Mr. Gregory wrote to him:

“Were the Bahá’í Faith merely a cult with a human origin, it could attract only people who shared its views. Its mysterious Power is indicated by its ability to transform people whose views are diametrically opposed to its ideals and to give them new minds and new hearts. This has been my privilege to observe North and South over a long period of years. It is now making progress South, North and all around the world. It is here in the South uniting the races as nothing else has ever done or can do. It is creating the bond that is permanent, not the ephemeral bond of the old order. . . .

“That you will see its value in time I have no doubt, but your recognition of this supreme source of guidance, illumination and unity will come too late. . . . ” (pp. 262-63)

Louis Gregory’s marriage itself was a way to show the world the principle of racial unity on the most fundamental level. Contrary to the deepest popular prejudice of the time, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, on a number of occasions, implicitly expressed his approval of interracial marriage. With His loving encouragement Louis Gregory married Louisa Mathew, a white Briton, and the two became the first Bahá’í interracial couple. This was done at a time when intermarriage in the United States not only defied social conventions but was held to be a criminal offense in many states. As late as 1940 there were thirty states with antimiscegenation laws that banned black-white marriages. The Gregorys [Page 48] had to pay the price. They were to endure hostility and, even more painful, were forced to live apart over extended periods of time and often had to travel separately. But the experience drew them even closer together, as each went on to teach the Faith and set an example for others to follow.

To Move the World, then, is truly a biography of a hero—a hero who stood firm against the onslaught of a hostile and cynical world and never lost his basic conviction of the nobility of man; a hero who was a witness to the awful pain of his own slowly maturing religious community, as yet, and for a while, not fully, or universally aware of the true meaning of racial unity; a hero who never doubted or questioned the solid and divine foundation upon which the new order was being built. He had an uncompromising faith in the power of the Covenant and knew that the infallible wisdom and leadership of Shoghi Effendi would set his community on the right course and safeguard its precious unity. To Move the World, incidentally, is also a significant study of the organic growth of the Bahá’í administrative order in America and an excellent account of the expansion of the Faith in this country.

In the passage from The Advent of Divine Justice quoted above Shoghi Effendi enumerated the attributes needed by those who were to challenge and overcome racial barriers: “genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate tact, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort” (p. 269). Louis Gregory displayed them all. “‘You have attained,’” Shoghi Effendi wrote to Mr. Gregory, “‘spiritual heights that few . . . can claim to have scaled. You have displayed a spirit that few, if any, can equal’” (p. 317). When the news of his death reached Haifa, Shoghi Effendi (on 6 August 1951) sent the following cablegram to the American Bahá’ís:

“Profoundly deplore grievous loss of dearly beloved, noble-minded, golden-hearted Louis Gregory, pride and example to the Negro adherents of the Faith. Keenly feel loss of one so loved, admired and trusted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Deserves rank of first Hand of the Cause of his race. Rising Bahá’í generation in African continent will glory in his memory and emulate his example. . . . ” (p. 310)

It is time now for this generation to become aware of the life and services of one whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá described as a “‘new creation’” and “‘pure gold,’” who “‘is acceptable in any market and is current in every country’” (pp. 313, 314).

Gayle Morrison’s To Move the World, scholarly and well-written, should be recognized as an effort to create this awareness. Her book is a significant, and welcome, addition to the ever-increasing literature on the Bahá’í Faith.

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Authors & Artists

JOCELYN BOOR is a music therapist who holds a M.F.A. in music therapy from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Out of Wisconsin Vanthology.

GREGG BROWN is on the staff of the detoxification unit of the Vermilion, Illinois, County Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

JANE MERRILL FILSTRUP is a senior editor for 50 Plus Magazine. Her articles have appeared in a variety of publications, such as Harvard, Town & Country, Diversion, New York, Baby Talk, and Cosmopolitan. She has coauthored two books with her husband and From Monday Through Friday: Day-care Alternatives with Professor Dorothy Gross.

ALEXANDER GARVIN is a city planning consultant, a real estate developer in New York City, and a lecturer in city planning at Yale University. From 1974 through 1978 he was Deputy Commissioner for Housing for New York City and from 1978 through 1980 Director of Comprehensive Planning. His “Three Faces of Harlem” appeared in our Winter 1967 issue and his “Could Robert Moses Do It in the Seventies?” in our Fall 1974 issue.

CRAIG LOEHLE holds a Ph.D. in systems ecology from Colorado State University.

NOSRATOLLAH RASSEKH, a frequent contributor to World Order, is a professor of history at Lewis and Clark College. He holds degrees in political science, international relations, and history from Stanford University.

ANNA M. STEVENSON is a graphics artist, who has taught art both on the high school and college level. She has spent half her life as a Mormon (of the fourth generation) and half as a Bahá’í.

ART CREDITS. Cover, design by John Solarz, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 1, photograph by J. M. Conrader; p. 3, photograph by Michael Winger-Bearskin; p. 7, photograph by Chris Cholas; p. 8, photograph by Grace Nielsen; p 15, photograph by Camille O’Reilly; pp. 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, photographs by Alexander Garvin.

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