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. He has published a number of scholarly works, his poetry has been gathered in various anthologies, and he has given a variety of talks, workshops, and interviews on issues of race 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. He met people like Margaret Danner and Ron Milner. Thomas then became a student at Michigan State University (MSU) in 1966. When he returned home that summer he experienced the 1967 Detroit riot, and after some campus activism and success publishing, in his junior year he attended the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. and began an activism on race issues on and beyond campus. In his senior year Thomas founded an assistance program for black students on campus, wrote for the campus newspaper and transitioned directly to a Master's Degree program. In 1970 Thomas graduated and joined the staff of the new Center for Urban Affairs on campus and his poetry was included in A galaxy of black writing. Around the same time Thomas married South Carolinian June Manning. Before coming to MSU in 1968 she had been part of the reaction to the Orangeburg massacre. Both continued to hold various positions over the next few years and by 1976 they had two children and both began to pursue PhDs at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor – he finished his in 1976 on black history of Detroit from 1915 to 1945 and she finished hers in 1977.
Returning to MSU in 1979, Thomas started as an associate professor of racial and ethnic studies working in the department's new program in the study of human rights. It was the first campus program that would feature African-American history as well as examples from the wider world of race issues and the work being done to address them. That year he also co-wrote the book Blacks and Chicanos in Urban Michigan. The Thomas' kept up service and visibility in the Baháʼí community such as being present for the 50th anniversary of Louhelen Baháʼí School. Thomas gave a 30 minute talk at the 9th Association of Baháʼí Studies (ABS) conference in 1984 and would continue to contribute to ABS conferences and publications in succeeding years: a day-long seminar on inter-cultural issues, a convener and editor for invited papers on "Models of racial unity" and the Hasan M. Balyuzi Memorial Lectureship. He also contributed a chapter to a book Circle of Unity. Thomas also began to make appearances at and gave assistance to initiatives on race justice and equality in communities such as in Chicago at an award-winning program.
In 1987 Thomas was named a professor at MSU and co-wrote Detroit: Race and Uneven Development via Temple University Press, a text that has been updated and printed by MSU Press. His contribution highlighted what Thomas began to think of as the "Other Tradition" of black-white cooperation, anti-racism. That same year Thomas became a founding member of the Black Men's Gathering (BMG) to encourage the leadership of service of black men in the religion. In 1992 Thomas revised his PhD and published Life for Us is what We Make it: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915–1945 through Indiana University Press and the Thomas' were also noted attending the Baháʼí World Congress. Now using the term "The Other Tradition", in 1993 Thomas wrote Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress and Understanding interracial unity: a study of U.S. race relations. 1996 was the beginning of the implementation of the Multi-Racial Unity Living Experience (MRULE) project at MSU he founded with one of his advanced degree students and was eventually the subject of several advanced degrees at several universities. In 1997 Thomas contributed a chapter to a book on how non-profit non-governmental organizations contributed to social justice in Social justice philanthropy reviewing the American Baháʼí community as one case. Since 1997 Thomas had often been elected annually to the Regional Baháʼí Council of the area – a mid-level institution with responsibilities over Baháʼí communities in several states. In 2002 Thomas wrote Bridging Racial Divides in Michigan's Urban Communities published through MSU Press and several decades of work culminated in the text Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Baháʼís in North America, 1898–2004 with Thomas as a co-editor, wrote three chapters of it, and was published by the US Baháʼí Publishing Trust. In 2007 Thomas contributed to The State of black Michigan, 1967–2007 by MSU Press and his poetry was included in Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing.
In 2012 Thomas retired from MSU. In 2013 he wrote and co-wrote two texts – Disenfranchisement: Social Health Issues and Implications and Detroit: Race Riots, Racial Conflicts, and Efforts to Bridge the Racial Divide. Since 2015 he has made several appearances discussing "The Other Tradition" theme.
Biography Born and raised in Detroit Richard Walter Thomas was born April 2, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan, son of Walter and Estelle Thomas, living in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, near Hastings Street, later calling it a ghetto. The Brewster-Douglass Project were built for the "working poor"; the Detroit Housing Commission required an employed parent for each family before establishing tenancy.
Thomas commented his father didn't believe in non-violence such as by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., though they did support the union movement in the city. Thomas recalled his parents talking about the 1943 Detroit race riot and said it affected the state of race identity and relations as he grew up and he still gets nervous from the history of "boundaries" and warnings his parents gave him of crossing them in the 1940s and 50s. In the period from 1940 to 1950, more than 66% of the black population in Detroit had been born outside the area, with most born in the South. 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. Those white people who were more established economically moved out of the city to newly developed suburbs, which often were divided by class and income levels. In that period black growth in the suburbs averaged 2.7%, while in previous decades it had been 5%. Social tensions increased as blacks felt oppressed by discrimination, a majority-white police force, and restricted housing.
Thomas was a graduate of the last non-integrated class of Miller High School in 1957, after which he joined the United States Marine Corps. He was discharged from the Marines in 1960, returned to Detroit to live with his parents and four siblings. Contrasting with being a black man serving in an integrated military, he recalls being arrested near Canfield Ave and W Woodward Ave in Detroit as part of the norms in Detroit, akin to an incident of Driving while black and that stores and hospitals would not serve blacks.
He "flitted with the idea of becoming a minister" but other friends inspired him to try poetry instead. "This is one of the roads that led me to the (Baháʼí) Faith".
Black Poetry and Baháʼí Thomas hung out at Bill and Marie "Mama" Summer's home. There he encountered the National Islam, even being "courted" and visiting an orthodox Muslim home, as well as Marie's less heated and "rough street approach" of her husband Bill. While at their home, Thomas encountered "...Fred _ , (who) was a Baháʼí white graduate student from Wayne State University (WSU,) and 'was very naive about race'". "Fred's religion did not interest me at the time. I was too involved in poetry." Nevertheless, it was Fred who introduced Thomas to the work of Margaret Danner – a Baha'i and well known black poet and then poet-in-residence at WSU and stayed at the home of Naomi Oden. Thomas was invited to share his poetry with Danner and he was "ecstatic" to visit a published black poet though he felt threatened by the mention of the religion. Thomas also met black poet Ron Milner and "with their help and inspiration I got myself together." Danner was visible in the local Detroit news from July. Danner and Milner were among a group working on publishing in 1961.
Joined the Baháʼí Faith The presence of Baháʼís was visible in Detroit back to 1916;* and well known Baháʼís visited – Martha Root, and Louis George Gregory. The Davison area Louhelen Baháʼí School opened in 1931 some 60 miles away. 1960 opened with the Baháʼís holding World Religion Day, followed by the June Race Amity Day talk, and classes on the Baháʼí view of race unity at Louhelen. In 1961 the Baháʼís in Detroit held the Race Unity Picnic, and WSU hosted a multifaith meeting that included the Baháʼí Club in the autumn. Thomas recalled his fundamentalist Black Baptist mother thinking talk about interracial unity was from communists. Nevertheless Thomas joined the religion in 1962 after a period of study. 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? ... It would have profound personal, family, social and church community consequences. And Mama Bruce was not budging. 'Boy!!' she exclaimed one day. 'Do you know what day you're living in!!?' She would not suffer vacillation, foolish or otherwise.
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! These people, these good, God-intoxicated Christians in 1844 were looking in the wrong place! They were searching for the Second Coming in the clouds of their spiritual misunderstanding.... As much as I loved my mom, minister, friends, Sunday school teachers, and dearly loved listening and singing and swaying with the choir, I had to make a decision, scary as it was to make. I decided in that quiet night, while the household slept, that I was going to accept Bahá'u'lláh as the return of the Christ Spirit, as the Prophet for this day and age.
Naomi and Mama Bruce would leap with joy! But, Lord help me! What would Mom say when she heard I was not only leaving the church of my birth but joining a strange religion that placed a strange Prophet on the same level as precious Jesus, who rescued our slave forebears and softened our present sorrows and grief.... I now recall how I did not help matters much by being overly enthusiastic about my new Faith. I could have been far more diplomatic in my dealings with Mom and my former church community but I was young and excited and inspired by the stories of the Báb and the Bábís and their sacrifices of life and limb.... At the same time, it also inspired me more than I had ever been inspired by the years of listening to preaching, choir singing and Sunday school lessons. 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.