Louis Gregory

Louis George Gregory (born June 6, 1874 in Charleston, South Carolina; died July 30, 1951 in Eliot, Maine) was a prominent member of the Bahá'í Faith posthumously appointed a Hand of the Cause, the highest appointed position in the Bahá'í Faith, by Shoghi Effendi.

He was born on June 6, 1874 to African-American parents liberated during the Civil War whose number included his future stepfather 1st Sgt. George Gregory. His mother was Mary Elizabeth whose mother, Mary, was African and whose father was an enslaver named George Washington Dargan of the Rough Fork plantation in Darlington, South Carolina. When Gregory was four years old, his father, Ebaneezer George died. At seven years of age, Louis was witness to the savage lynching of his grandfather who had taken the family in and who had succeeded in a blacksmith business. Then his 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. George Gregory rose to 1st Sgt. in the 104th United States Colored Troops(USCT) after being recruited by Major Delaney, of African descent. After the war, he was honorifically called Colonel Gregory and his family received a Civil War pension. At this point Louis George Gregory took the name of his step father. Due to his military service, his step-son 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 that upon his death in 1929, the Union put out an advertisement in the Charleston Newspaper asking all Union members to attend, 1000 of both races did make it to Monrovia Union Cemetery, where headstones to George and Mary Elizabeth stand to this day.

...
Wikipedia