The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ report “The Mosque in America: A National Portrait” (April 2001) broke ground with its focus on American Muslim congregational life.

The Gallup Center for Muslim Studies’ “Muslim Americans: A National Portrait” provides demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Muslim Americans and measures attitudes.

June Manning Thomas is Centennial Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a Bahá’í author. Her books include Planning Progress: Lessons From Shoghi Effendi.

Richard Thomas, with Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, co-edited Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’ís in North America, 1898-2000, which featured, among others, jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. He is a retired professor of history at Michigan State University.

Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis, with Richard Thomas, co-edited Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Bahá’ís in North America, 1898-2000, which featured, among others, jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. She is a professor of English at Miami University in Ohio.

The West Coast Poverty Center is based at the University of Washington. Jennifer Romich is director as well as professor of social work and public affairs.

Greg Duncan is Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine. He has published extensively on welfare and poverty, including (as co-author) Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children and (as co-editor) For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families.

Angela Glover Blackwell is founder and CEO of PolicyLink, a national research institute in Oakland, Calif., that works for economic and social equity. She is a lawyer and well-known advocate on issues of poverty, race and the role of faith.

The Coalition for Compassion and Justice, based in Prescott, Ariz., helps meet the needs of people in poverty. Contact executive director Paul Mitchell.