Harlem's experiment in interracial, pacifist community

The Harlem Ashram (1940–1948) was a grand experiment that didn’t go very far. The interracial Christian commune at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street was modeled after ashrams, or Hindu religious centers, that Gandhi had established in India. Its founders were two white men, Ralph Templin and Jay Holmes Smith, who had been Methodist missionaries in India in the 1930s. There they became interested in Gandhi’s synthesis of religion, politics, and nonviolent protest. 

Templin and Smith were part of a cohort of American pacifists who saw Gandhi’s work as a potential model for political and religious activism in the United States. Other Harlem Ashram residents included Ruth Reynolds, a pacifist who would become a leader in Puerto Rico’s independence movement; James Farmer, an activist who would become a leader of the 1961 Freedom Rides; and Pauli Murray, a critical figure at the intersection of the civil rights and women’s movements. Bayard Rustin, later confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and organizer of the March on Washington, lived nearby and visited the ashram often. 

Ashram residents agreed that religious reflection was integral to building a social movement for peace and racial justice. Daily life included Christian worship, Bible study, and discussion of Gandhi’s organizing, often with visiting Indian activists and scholars. The ashram helped recently migrated African Americans to find housing and work, investigated police violence against striking workers, and planned for a credit union run by and for the black and Puerto Rican communities.