Bahá'í Faith in Jamaica

The Bahá'í Faith in Jamaica begins with a mention by `Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, in 1916 as Latin America being among the places Bahá'ís should take the religion to. The community of the Bahá'ís begins in 1942 with the arrival of Dr. Malcolm King. The first Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly of Jamaica, in Kingston, was elected in 1943. By 1957 the Bahá'ís of Jamaica were organized under the regional National Spiritual Assembly of the Greater Antilles, and on the eve of national independence in 1962, the Jamaica Bahá'ís elected their own National Spiritual Assembly in 1961. By 1981 hundreds of Bahá'ís and hundreds more non-Bahá'ís turned out for weekend meetings when Rúhíyyih Khánum spent six days in Jamaica. Public recognition of the religion came in the form of the Governor General of Jamaica, Sir Howard Cooke, proclaiming a National Bahá'í Day first on July 25 in 2003 and it has been an annual event since. While there is evidence of several active communities by 2008 in Jamaica, estimates of the Bahá'ís population range from the hundreds to the thousands.

`Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion, wrote a series of letters, or tablets, to the followers of the religion in the United States in 1916-1917; these letters were compiled together in the book titled Tablets of the Divine Plan. The sixth of the tablets was the first to mention Latin American regions and was written on April 8, 1916, but was delayed in being presented in the United States until 1919—after the end of the First World War and the Spanish flu. The first actions on the part of Bahá'í community towards Latin America were that of a few individuals who made trips to Mexico and South America near or before this unveiling in 1919, including Mr. and Mrs. Frankland, and Roy C. Wilhelm, and Martha Root. The sixth tablet was translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on April 4, 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on December 12, 1919.

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