Richard Walter Thomas (born April 2, 1939) is a retired African-American professor of Michigan State University known for his work in black issues and race relations.
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, in his later youth Thomas was introduced to the early forms of black power movements and joined the Baháʼí Faith in 1962.
[8] The increase in population had strained city schools and services for all residents and began an era from 1950 to 1970 of de facto racial segregation in the Metro Detroit area.
As he says:I had got quite comfortable hanging out with Baháʼís, ... (and) was seriously studying the Faith, but for me, a devout Baptist, a monumental religious barrier stood in the way: was Bahá'u'lláh really the return of the Spirit of Christ?
I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when I decided to accept Bahá'u'lláh as the return of the Spirit of Christ and the Prophet of God for this day: sitting at the dining room table in my parents' house reading Thief in the Night .... Then, thanks to Mr. Bill Sears's wonderful book, it struck me!
The more I read of the life of the Báb, Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá, the more I wanted to tell the entire world, to hit the streets like the Bábís, proclaiming the good news to everyone who would listen, regardless of the risks.
[22]: 1h4m30s Back in Detroit later in the spring of 1965 Joe Louis' sister, Eulalia Barrow Bobo, gave a talk on the religion,[37] followed a couple days later by a resister of the Nazi regime and soon Baha'i,(next year)[38] Rosey E.
[46] The club opened 1967 sponsoring a talk,[47] followed by a profiles of the religion published in the campus newspaper,[48] and presented a panel discussion on racial crisis and the international situation.
He recalls calling it the "rebellion";[6]: 2m20s the most severe riot in Detroit ever and the worst of the country that year, but as in comments of Joe Darden, that the conflict included dimensions beyond black-white issues.
[66] In September Thomas is called a Special Assistant to the "National Baháʼí Department of Youth and College Activities" and was quoted speaking of how to be relevant across a cultural divide: "Unity in diversity rather than integration, which is paternalistic, is the thing.
[106] That summer the Baháʼís held Race Unity Day,[107] and in the fall Thomas' mother Estelle joined in a letter to the editor community response to a case of harassment in Detroit.
[124] In December both Thomas', with Tina Guy and Napolun Birdsall, were on the committee for holding the Human Rights Day event sponsored by the Lansing Baháʼí assembly.
He thought interested students would be aiming at policy and programs of the topics and those who want to learn about these issues, the traditions of human rights and violations and wider context of these around the world and across disciplines.
[132] That year the Thomas' guest edited and wrote parts of a special issue of Catalyst magazine entitled "The State of the Black Community in Capitalist America".
[141] In 1986 Thomas was part of a panel at a Baháʼí peace conference in San Francisco,[142] and contributed a paper "Promoting Unity in a Multi-racial society" to the next ABS meeting.
[144] The organization was the initiative of John Magnum, former policeman, as a response to the goal of the Baháʼí Six Year Plan calling for "a greater involvement of the Faith in the life of society" starting with Mangum's own children and adding cousins and friends until it reached some 40 young people and incorporated as a non-profit in 1989.
[169] In October Thomas was a principal speaker at the fourth session of a Black-Jewish conference at MSU detailing the Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement, in the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, and the relationship between Thurgood Marshall and Jackson Greenberg.
[171][172] It was a revised and updated work based on his PhD thesis,[173] called "ambitious" though it also had numerous errors according to a review as well as not following the standard thought on black history of using proletarianization as an organizing principle, though Thomas was an early scholar in the subject, and now focused on community building, instead, as the basis of analysis.
[197] In 2003 Thomas was noted on the dissertation committee of Wilbert Jenkins about post-Civil War Charleston, SC,[203] and was inspirational to a master's degree student at MSU extending the review and work of MRULE.
Thomas also visited NAACP officials and the Seacoast African-American Cultural Center near Green Acre Baháʼí School for the centenary of the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 that ended the Russo-Japanese War "to discuss Building Multi-Racial Communities.
[217] In 2009 Thomas contributed a talk for Black history month with a recorded presentation at Grand Rapids Community College commenting on the election of President Obama.
[5] Thomas cooperated in an October 2010 conference co-sponsored and organized by ABS and the Office of Communications of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States held at Louhelen Baháʼí School.
[222] In 2012 Thomas appeared on the radio show The Takeaway interviewed by Celeste Headlee on "The Other Tradition" theme for a conference on race unity with William Smith and the role of "amity".
In 2012 the international governing body of the Baháʼís, the Universal House of Justice, commended the fact that black men had been energized and could localize the process and ended the national group.
[155] In 2014 Thomas was noted supporting black women scholarship,[230] was given an award by the Michigan historical society,[231] and presented at the National Conference on Race Amity Forum.
[233] In 2017 Thomas appeared with his co-writer on several projects, Joe Darden, at the Association of American Geographers,[234] and also published a review of Louis Venters No Jim Crow Church: The Origins of South Carolina's Baháʼí Community.
[235] He made a presentation on the BMG,[156] and was videotaped as part of a Baháʼí review of struggling with issues of racism about a university-wide discussion program to teach acceptance of diversity to college faculty and students.
MRULE then began to evolve as it ran in the residence halls and introduced the basic concept of the organic oneness of humanity, tools for discussion-based engagement, and multiple degrees from studying the process.
[22]: 10m He observed that fellow scholars and students in classes did not believe actual instances of interracial cooperation which lead him to contribute a chapter in Detroit: Race and Uneven Development from 1987.
[22]: 12m7s In this theme, Thomas includes mention of[22]: 26m18s... Bacon's Rebellion, black and white soldiers during the American Revolutionary War on the side of Britain, Abolitionism in the United States, black and white cooperation in the Underground Railroad, John Brown, black and white soldiers during the American Civil War, the Grimké sisters, the period of Knights of Labor and the general Reconstruction Era, the NAACP, the Baháʼí Faith, interracial coalition building in the democratic party, The Communist Party USA and African Americans, Highlander Folk School, Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Educational Fund it developed, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the Civil Rights Movement, the "Beloved Community" of Martin Luther King Jr., Freedom Summer and the various freedom marches, the Detroit organization of "Focus Hope", and MRULE.