to Gregory of the power of the religion. Gregory, still president of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society, arranged for presentations by several Baháʼís to the group. Gregory initiated a major trip through the South. He traveled to Richmond, Virginia; Durham and other locations in North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina, the city of his family and childhood; and Macon, Georgia, where he told people about the religion. In Charleston he is known to have presented talks at the Carpenter's Union Hall. He contacted a priest who had encountered the religion at Green Acre in Maine, where he met Mirzá ʻAbu'l-Faḍl. In Charleston Alonzo Twine converted; he was an African-American lawyer and the first known Baháʼí of South Carolina. But Twine was later committed to a mental institution by his mother and family priest, where he died a few years later. He continued to had out Baháʼí pamphlets he had made himself. Gregory began to participate more in the early Baháʼí administration. In February 1911 he was elected to Washington's Working Committee of the Baháʼí Assembly, the first African American to serve in that position. In April 1911 Gregory served as an officer of Harriet Gibbs Marshall's Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression, along with George William Cook of Howard University and others. The school was advertised, especially in black publications, in several cities across the country. Pilgrimage In late 1910 ʻAbdu'l-Bahá invited Gregory to go on pilgrimage. Gregory sailed from New York City on March 25, 1911. He traveled overland through Europe to Palestine and Egypt. In Palestine, Gregory met with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, where he also visited the Shrine of Baháʼu'lláh and the Shrine of the Báb. In Egypt he met with Shoghi Effendi. While in the Mideast, he discussed the race issue in the United States with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and the other pilgrims. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said there was no distinction between the races. During this time, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá started encouraging Gregory and Louisa Mathew, a white English pilgrim, to get to know each other. After leaving Egypt, Gregory traveled to Germany, where he spoke at a number of gatherings to Baháʼís and their friends. When he returned to the United States, he continued to travel, mainly in the southern United States to talk about the Baháʼí faith. He held his first public meeting on the religion after his return, and published an article under his own name in the Washington Bee