Bahá’í Leader at Howard University

BAHAI LEADER AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY

Head of Oriental Religious Sect Delivers Lecture to the Student Body.

FREEDOM HERE BROUGHT FREEDOM ELSEWHERE.

The Effect Of Freedom In This Country Reacted All Over The World

Washington, April 25 — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’í Abbas Effendi, oriental seer and world leader of the Bahá’í movement, delivered the last of his series of lectures here tonight.

In an address to the students of Howard University, he said: “Let us recall the fact that the first proclamation of liberty, of freedom from slavery, was accomplished in this continent.

The white man went into war for the sake of the colored. They were forfeiting possessions and sacrificing lives in order that the colored might be freed from bondage, and this has had tremendous effects upon the sociology of other parts.

“The colored people of Africa were in a most terrible state of bondage, and the European powers, emulating the American altruism, accomplished a proclamation of universal liberty. So you were the means here of liberating your fellow beings elsewhere. This effort on the part of the white people in America should never be lost sight of, and therefore you must be very grateful and must be very kind to the whites here. And the white people in this cou[n]try should be most happy and grateful to you, so that both may develop in the degrees of altruism and humanitarianism.

“May you be further drawn together with the whites, in order that extraordinary development may be accomplished by you and in order that fellowship may become a reality, a true fact, among you. In short, you must be grateful to whites, for they were liberators of your people not only join this country, in the continent of America, but elsewhere in Africa.

“Were it not for your freedom here one can see that freedom elsewhere would not have been accomplished, and up to the present day bondage would have been present. But now, praise be to God, the bondage has passed away and the white and the colored are both free from it, and I pray in your behalf that you may develop and advance in ethics and morality; that you may achieve it in such a superlative degree that there shall be no name other than one humankind. So that one appellation may be invoked, and that is humankind.”

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