Daily News

Local Baha’is Gather in Forest Park for Walk for Oneness

SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Baha’i community recently hosted a Walk for Oneness in Forest Park designed to bring people together around their common humanity while also celebrating the broad diversity in Springfield and the region.

Approximately 50 people took part in the walk around Forest Park, where friends and strangers alike got to know each other and walk for the cause of building unity and celebrating diversity. The program included activities for children who designed T-shirts and signs representing oneness and unity. The walk around the ballfields at Forest Park was preceded by a very short talk about the oneness of humanity, a central tenet of the Baha’i faith. The brief presentation was followed by the reading of some Baha’i writings on the topic of unity and the oneness of humankind.

Baha’is have been active in Springfield and the region for many years, including in 1921, when the Baha’is of Springfield held a race-amity conference at the former Springfield Central High School, now the site of the Classical Condominiums. The conference represented an interracial and interfaith audience gathered to address racial prejudice in the city and the region at the time.