Interesting Cedar Rapids Connection: Nina Gomer Du Bois by Jo Dohoney
Submitted September 2024
NOTE: While working with the Bahá’í Archives in Cedar Rapids, Jo came across a file on Nina Gomer Du Bois, which led her to do some research and write this story. While Nina didn’t declare in Cedar Rapids or live in Iowa as a Bahá’í, it’s still a very interesting connection.
Nina Gomer was born July 4, 1870 to Charles Gomer and Henriette or Jeanette Pease in Quincy, Illinois, the record being unclear on the mother’s name. Her mother died when she was young and her father remarried to May J. Schneider, who would raise her. They traveled to Cedar Rapids, where he would begin a career cooking in Cedar Rapids hotels and rise to become the Chef at the Clifton, an elegant 70 room hotel on First Avenue. His work and his position as a Black Mason placed the family in the rising Black middle class.
It was no surprise, then, that her parents sent her to study at Wilburforce University in Ohio, the oldest Historically Black University in the nation. There she met W.E.B. Du Bois, a visiting scholar, who would go on to become one of the Founders of the NAACP, the Editor of THE CRISIS, an eminent American Sociologist, and a founder of the Civil Right Movement. At the time they met, he was unhappy with his career of teaching Greek, when he wanted to study humans instead. She was an attractive, sweet, caring woman who could be counted on to listen to his concerns. And he was a man who had calculated that he should marry before age 30 and that his salary, if paid, would support them both. He proposed and they married in her father’s home in Cedar Rapids on May 12, 1896.
They moved to Philadelphia and later to Atlanta for his work. Their son Burghardt was born there and contracted typhoid. Because none of the white doctors would treat him, he died at age 18 months in 1899. In 1900, Nina gave birth to their daughter Yolande, who would survive. At that time, Nina largely managed the home and family while her husband taught, wrote, edited, and traveled to speaking engagements on Civil Rights.
On April 12, 1912, DuBois met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá after he spoke at the NAACP Conference in Chicago. He was impressed with the Master and the work of the Bahá’í Movement. In May, Du Bois devoted much of his column in THE CRISIS, “Men of the Month” to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He continued to collaborate with Louis Gregory and other Bahá’ís on racial issues.
As her daughter had grown up and married, in 1927 Nina found time to serve on the Executive Committee of the Women’s International Circle of Peace and Foreign Relations, which led to the formation of the 4th Pan-African Congress in New York City that same year. W.E.B. and Nina continued to have connections to the Bahá’í Faith, which led to Nina becoming a Bahá’í in New York City in 1935. W.E.B. never did, having his own issues with God, but he proclaimed that of all faiths, the Bahá’í Faith did tempt him. He did write a letter to Louis Gregory attempting to sever his wife’s membership in the Faith. Nina was a passive and private person so it is unknown the effect this had on her. We do know that on June 26, 1950, in Baltimore, she passed on and was buried in Barrington Massachusetts next to her son’s grave.
