In the summer of 2017, I helped develop a project in Atlanta, Georgia, focused on a proposed memorial for the enslaved Africans once sold there – and it led me to a giant.

We planned to situate the memorial at the Crawford Frazier Brokerage, an auction house that once stood on the grounds of Five Points MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation Authority) station in downtown Atlanta.  

After we had completed the final design for the project and secured the necessary funding, we engaged in ongoing talks with the city about the logistical concerns surrounding the work. During our consultation, the design team decided to approach famed civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis about the proposal to see if he would be willing to offer his support, an endorsement we hoped would go a long way toward persuading any reluctant officials in city government.  

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So, on a sunny weekday in August, I found myself in a boardroom in an elegantly appointed office in a downtown Atlanta high–rise, my cream–colored cotton suit creased and wrinkled from the afternoon heat. I sat in one of the large, comfortable leather armchairs, thinking about the man I would soon meet.  I thought of the grainy Black and white footage of him as a youthful civil rights worker from Troy, Alabama, leading a group of some 600 peaceful protesters across a bridge in Selma, Alabama, named after Edmund Pettus – a Confederate war veteran and former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.  

That day would come to be known as Bloody Sunday. The clubs that split heads open that day – the tear gas that burned the eyes – the ironclad feet of horses that trampled over men, women, and children alike – those searing images had left burn marks on my consciousness.  

I thought of the March on Washington in 1963, when a 23-year-old John Lewis, a seasoned veteran of the freedom movement by then, stood before a crowd of thousands to deliver one of the keynote addresses. I thought of his years of public service and how his principled stand on human rights, environmental justice, and religious pluralism had become beacons of hope for a wayward society lost in the wilderness of racism, materialism, and moral relativism.

Yes, John Robert Lewis, diminutive in stature yet possessing monumental courage, cast a long shadow that I felt honored to stand in. So, as I waited, my palms sweating in anticipation, I steadied myself to meet a man who had contended with the forces of evil in life’s public arena many times over. The cuts and bruises his body suffered, wounds still visible today, show the scarred evidence of his moral convictions. The desecration of the flesh and the consecration of the spirit makes those scars both painful and beautiful to see. 

In a talk in New York City in 1912, Abdu’l–Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith spoke of sacrifice. He said:

If you plant a seed in the ground, a tree will become manifest from that seed. The seed sacrifices itself to the tree that will come from it. The seed is outwardly lost, destroyed; but the same seed which is sacrificed will be absorbed and embodied in the tree, its blossoms, fruit and branches. If the identity of that seed had not been sacrificed to the tree which became manifest from it, no branches, blossoms or fruits would have been forthcoming.

When Congressman Lewis finally walked into the room and I rose to greet him, it felt, in some sense, like a confluence of histories. In his seven decades, he had seen and done so much. His life and the lives of many others – some known, some unknown – represented the sacrificial seeds from which my freedoms germinated. My generation entered the world on the worn heels of those who had marched towards a future made from the mystical intercourse of faith and fortitude. We were the children of the midwives of the movement, men and women alike, who birthed us into a world a little less threatening than the one they had known.  

As we shook hands and I looked into his deep, knowing eyes, I could sense a kind of stillness, a quiet nobility, the acquired dignity of the tested. That grounding force seemed to anchor him to some unstated principled conviction. In his smile, I saw a calming reassurance. I felt a deeply rooted joy, an earned contentment known only to those who have offered up the best of themselves in service to others. In that same talk, Abdu’l-Baha said:

… man must sacrifice the qualities and attributes of the world of nature for the qualities and attributes of the world of God. For instance, consider the substance we call iron. Observe its qualities; it is solid, black, cold. These are the characteristics of iron. When the same iron absorbs heat from the fire, it sacrifices its attribute of solidity for the attribute of fluidity. It sacrifices its attribute of darkness for the attribute of light, which is a quality of the fire. It sacrifices its attribute of coldness to the quality of heat which the fire possesses so that in the iron there remains no solidity, darkness or cold. It becomes illumined and transformed, having sacrificed its qualities to the qualities and attributes of the fire.  

I spent 45 minutes with John Lewis that day, telling him about my artistic vision, how I hoped to bend light and shadow to tell a painful story. Mostly, though, I listened. I listened as he spoke about the cleansing capacity of truth. I listened as he talked about life and legacy — about the bliss of purposeful suffering and the urgent need for courage. 

When I was a small boy, one of the first things I learned in art class was how to make a vessel out of clay.  I remember stacking coils of red modeling clay, one on top of the other, as I dipped my fingers in water to form a weld between layers. All of the students in the class followed the same painstaking process, yet all of the cups looked slightly different. Some were slim, some were more rotund. Others slumped a little to one side or the other, but the one quality they all had in common was they could all hold water.  This essential capacity defined their function. 

Spending time with John Lewis reminded me of that important lesson. Leadership has no definitive form. It can reside in anyone. The person embodying it can be large or small, Black or white, male or female, rich or poor, educated or not. If the heart is open, we can recognize its substance and its fundamental irony: the path to leadership runs through the crucible of service, and the road to nobility admits only the sincerely humble. 

As I gathered with Congressman Lewis and others for a group photograph before I left, I noticed his powerful posture of submission. He stood there with his hands clasped in front of him, and his head slightly bowed – his face radiant with a beautiful smile. In the photograph, it is evident that I am several inches taller than him, but I knew I was in the presence of a giant. 

Ultimately, the proposed memorial wasn’t realized, despite the congressman’s enthusiastic support.  The divisive nature of politics can grind many worthwhile projects to a halt, but for me, that isn’t what I remember most. I remember, for a brief moment in time, in an office in an unassuming building in downtown Atlanta, I sat and talked with John Robert Lewis, a servant, a quiet warrior for justice, a humble leader. 

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It reminds me of what Abdu’l-Baha wrote about humility: 

…man must become evanescent in God. Must forget his own selfish conditions that he may thus arise to the station of sacrifice. It should be to such a degree that if he sleep, it should not be for pleasure, but to rest the body in order to do better, to speak better, to explain more beautifully, to serve the servants of God and to prove the truths. When he remains awake, he should seek to be attentive, serve the Cause of God and sacrifice his own stations for those of God. When he attains to this station, the confirmations of the Holy Spirit will surely reach him, and man with this power can withstand all who inhabit the earth.

The Baha’i teachings ask every Baha’i to abstain from participation in partisan politics. Click here to read more about why.

Determined to make a difference, Dr. Helen Elsie Austin always faithfully pursued her goals and stood up for what was right despite the racism she experienced. 

She said, “…if we go about it [transformation] with faith, with intelligent protest, standing up and demonstrating what the right attitude and motivation is for human progress, we can progress. After all, the battle we face is essentially a spiritual battle to transform the souls and spirits of human beings, to empower them to express love and justice, and to develop a unity of conscience.”

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Learn about the trailblazing life and legacy of Dr. H. Elsie Austin, an inspiring African American Baha’i who lived a life of firsts in her career, educational pursuits, and service to humanity.

Dr. Helen Elsie Austin’s Family, Upbringing, and Education

Elsie was born on May 10, 1908, in Tuskegee, Alabama to parents Mary and George Austin. Mary and George were both teachers and encouraged Elsie and her brother, George James Austin II, to pursue an education to help them further civil rights. Her family had a long tradition of passing down their stories of overcoming hardship from generation to generation. 

Elsie especially drew inspiration and strength from the story of her maternal great-grandmother, Louisa Dotson. Although Louisa and her husband, Reverend Mentor Dotson, were both born into slavery, Mentor ran for election after he was freed and won a seat in the Alabama House of Representatives in 1872, which made him a target for the Ku Klux Klan.

“As the story goes, one night, when my great-grandmother Louisa was alone with just her children, the Klan came to her house [and] broke in the door,” recalled Elsie, as recorded in the Baha’is of the United States online memorial for her. 

“Pointing guns at her, they demanded that she tell them where her husband was. She looked them in the eye. She said, ‘Just go ahead and kill me because I will never tell you where he is.’ After more curses and threats and shots, they decided not to kill her and left.”

Elsie was awed by her great-grandmother’s “determination not to give in to injustice and depression even at the risk of death.” She called Louisa Dotson to mind when she needed courage in racist and hostile environments.

Elsie’s parents later moved the family north to Cincinnati, Ohio, in pursuit of a better education for their children. Although the elementary school she went to was all-Black, her high school was predominantly white. On her first day of high school, the teacher read from a history textbook about all the contributions of every racial demographic, except Black people. The book erroneously stated that Black people were created to be subservient and had made no significant contributions to society. 

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Elsie recounted:

Two little Black girls in a school full of white children in a classroom full of white children, and with all the candor and cruelty of the young, the entire class looked at us, and there were, of course, a few snickers and grins. It was then that I remembered my grandmother. I felt as if the Klan was standing there with the guns trained on me.

With great resentment and resolve, I stood up and said, ‘I was taught in a Black school that Africans worked iron before Europeans knew anything about it. I was taught that they knew how to cast bronze in making statues and that they worked in gold and in ivory so beautifully that the European nations came to their shores to buy their carvings and statues. That’s what I was taught in a Black school.’ There was an electrical silence.

But friends, can you imagine if there had been no protest, what ingrained prejudice and hostility would have been implanted in the minds of those children, and what humiliation and degradation would have been stamped upon us?

Elsie carried this strength and resolve with her, and was among the first group of Black students to integrate the University of Cincinnati in 1928. However, this first class of young Black students was not met with open arms.

In an interview with Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis and Richard Thomas for their book, “Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Baha’is in North America, 1898-2000,” Elsie said:

…All the [Black] girls were called into the dean’s office. And we were told that we should be as unobtrusive as possible on the campus. That we were members of the subject race, the university did not really want us, but as it was a city university it had to take us. And we left that university just about in a state of shock because we hadn’t been prepared for that chat. And we immediately met with the young [Black] men on campus and told them about it. And we all decided that we’re going out for everything. That everybody in that freshman class is gonna come away with some distinction.

…We just decided we were gonna show them. And we all did. Every member of that freshman class had some distinction. And the success of it was that the next year the same official who had spoken to us called us back and apologized. He said, ‘I made an error and I want you to know that you are a credit to your race.’

Not only did Elsie attain her undergraduate degree with honors, but she also became the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati College of Law and later the first African American woman to serve as Assistant Attorney-General of the State of Ohio. She received an honorary doctorate in law from Wilberforce University for “outstanding service as the first colored woman to hold this post.” 

Dr. Helen Elsie Austin’s Life as a Baha’i

Before Elsie learned about the Baha’i Faith, she had become bitter about religion after witnessing so much prejudice and division. She said:

I was young, angry, incensed, and hostile. I went to my father, and I said, ‘I’m going to become an agnostic or an atheist because I just don’t believe anymore in these religions that are all separate, all fighting with each other, all enforcing prejudice against some group, yet they say God is the father of all mankind.’

My father heard me out and then said, ‘Well before you do it, why don’t you go and talk to these Cincinnati people who are talking about the Baha’i Faith?’ He was not a Baha’i, but he said, ‘They have some very interesting views and maybe that will interest you.’

So, for two years, Elsie studied the Baha’i writings, attended classes and fireside chats about the Baha’i Faith, and met so many wonderful Baha’is, like Louis Gregory and Dorothy Baker, who helped her overcome her bitterness. In her essay, “Social Basis of World Unity,” she wrote, “The Baha’i Teachings not only destroy without equivocation the fallacies which have nourished social strife and disunity, but they provide new patterns of social living and development through which men learn brotherhood by performance.”

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Elsie became a Baha’i in 1934, excited to join their efforts in contributing to the betterment of the world. As the Baha’i writings say:

To be a Bahá’í simply means to love all the world; to love humanity and try to serve it; to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood.

Twelve years after Elsie became a Baha’i, she made history in the Baha’i community by becoming the first African American woman to be elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States in 1946. 

Although Elsie was a successful attorney and had just gotten a raise and moved into a new apartment, she put her career on hold to pioneer in Africa in 1953 and share the revolutionary principles of the Baha’i Faith, including the eradication of all forms of prejudice, the elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty, the equality of women and men, the agreement of science and religion, the truth and oneness of all religions, the independent investigation of truth, and the importance of a universal language and education.

The first country she pioneered in was Morocco. Although she was traveling alone as a single African American woman in a country where women had fewer rights than in the United States and had no contacts in Morocco, she relied upon God and felt the protection of Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith. In an interview with Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis and Richard Thomas, she recalled, “Nobody assaulted me, nobody said unkind things to me, and from the very moment that I entered the country it seemed as if unseen hands and unseen power arranged contacts that were helpful, educational and very wonderful to me.”

Although she was an English speaker in an Arab and French-speaking country, she helped establish the first Baha’i community in Morocco and earned the title “Knight of Baha’u’llah” for introducing the Baha’i Faith to the country. 

Elsie was also elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of North and West Africa from 1955 to 1958. Elsie became a Foreign Service Officer and pioneered in Nigeria, Kenya, and the Bahamas after Morocco. She spent ten years in Africa working with educational and cultural programs sponsored by the United States Information Agency and initiated the first USIA women’s programs in Africa. As a result of her efforts, the USIA nominated Elsie for the Federal Women’s Award and the University of Cincinnati awarded her with an honorary doctorate of humanities in 1969.

After she passed away at age 96 in October 2004, the Universal House of Justice, the globally elected governing council of the Baha’i Faith, shared that “the shining example of her sacrificial life will remain a source of inspiration to her fellow believers for generations to come.”

Let’s remember her inspiring example as we strive to persevere in the face of adversities and live a life of service to humanity.