Louis George Gregory (June 6, 1874 – July 30, 1951) was a prominent American member of the Baháʼí Faith who was devoted to its expansion in the United States and elsewhere.

Gregory was among the elite group of educated African American leaders whom W. E. Du Bois referred to as "the talented tenth.

[4] Circa 1881, when Gregory was 7 years old, he witnessed the lynching of his grandfather by "a hate-inspired mob of white men," possibly Ku Klux Klan members[1] jealous of his financial success as a blacksmith.

Biographer Elsie Austin claimed the "bitterness and distortion which might have developed from this experience were deflected by the prayers and teaching of his grandmother, whose life was miraculously spared by the mob.

"[5] In 1881, Louis's mother remarried to George Gregory, who was the only freeman of African descent to join the Union Army from the 3000 in Charleston at the time.

Due to his military service, his stepson Louis George Gregory was introduced in family situations to make friends with the European descent children of Army officers who would visit the home.

George Gregory was also a leader in the community, playing a significant role in the inter-racial United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America; upon his death in 1929, the Union put out an advertisement in the Charleston Newspaper[which?]

[citation needed] Harrison escaped enslavement in 1862 and joined the Union Navy on May 6, 1862, in Port Royal, South Carolina.

Gregory's generous stepfather paid for his first year at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied English literature.

The meetings were also held among the poor at a school and a Baháʼí view of Christian scripture and prophecy much affected him and presented a framework for a reformulation of society.

While the Hannens went on pilgrimage in 1909 to visit ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, in Palestine, Gregory left the Treasury Department and established his practice in Washington, D.C.

[12]In 1910 Gregory stopped working as a lawyer and began a long period of service, holding meetings and traveling for the religion and writing and lecturing on the subject of racial unity.

The fact that upper class white Baháʼís repeatedly achieved steps towards integration was a confirmation to Gregory of the power of the religion.

In February 1911 he was elected to Washington's Working Committee of the Baháʼí Assembly, the first African American to serve in that position.

In April 1911 Gregory served as an officer of Harriet Gibbs Marshall's Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression, along with George William Cook of Howard University and others.

During this time, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá started encouraging Gregory and Louisa Mathew, a white English pilgrim, to get to know each other.

[22] He held his first public meeting on the religion after his return, and published an article under his own name in the Washington Bee in November, inspired by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in Britain that month.

[12] He assisted during ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's visit to the United States, during which he repeatedly emphasized the Baháʼí Faith and the oneness of humanity; he used black-colored references for pictures of beauty and virtue.

[16] At the reception, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá moved the place-cards to seat Gregory, the only African American, at the head table next to him.

[16][26] ʻAbdu'l-Bahá spoke at Bethel Literary and Historical Society where Gregory had long been involved and served as president.

By December Gregory had traveled among 14 of the 16 southern states named, speaking mostly to student audiences, which were overwhelmingly segregated by law.

[31] Hannen and Gregory were subsequently elected to a committee focused on the American South and Gregory focused on two approaches - presenting the religion's teachings on race issue to social leaders as well as to the general public - and initiated his next more extensive trip from 1919 to 1921 often with Roy Williams, an African-American Baháʼí from New York City.

Gregory developed a friendship with Samuel Chiles Mitchell, president of the University of South Carolina (1909–1913), and shared that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's views he heard at the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration affected him in his interracial work into the 1930s.

One of the ministers who opposed him had assisted in getting the first declared Baháʼí in the state committed to an institution for the mentally insane.

He often appeared with Alain LeRoy Locke, a fellow Baháʼí and prominent African-American thinker of the Harlem Renaissance.

[16] In response to Shoghi Effendi's call for the goals of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, the United States community arranged a program of action.

He also served on the first "assembly development" committee, focused on supporting materials to expand the religion in Central and South America.

In 1944 Gregory was on the planning committee for the "All-America Convention", which was attracting attendees from all Baháʼí national communities, both north and south.

[12] Newspapers covered the Race Amity conventions organized by Baháʼís from the 1920s through the 1950s, against a backdrop of persistent racial issues and violence in the US.

Profoundly deplore grievous loss of dearly beloved, noble-minded, golden-hearted Louis Gregory, pride and example to the Negro adherents of the Faith.