Helen Elsie Austin, a Baha'i who devoted her life to justice and truth, was a woman of many “firsts.” She was one of the first African-American women lawyers in the United States, the first African-American woman to receive a law degree from the University of Cincinnati and the first African-American woman to serve as an assistant to a state attorney general.

Dr. Helen Elsie AustinDr. Austin’s devotion to standing up for justice and truth began as a child in Cincinnati, where she was born in 1908. One of just two African-American children in her classroom, she pointed out errors in a textbook that denigrated the role of Africans in world history. Then she told her class how Africans had produced works of great beauty from bronze, gold and ivory.

“There was an electric silence,” Dr. Austin said many years later. The silence was followed by her teacher offering up more information on contributions by African-Americans to the world.

Dr. Austin, who earned a Doctor of Laws degree from Wilberforce University in Ohio, became a Baha'i at age 26 and served on the National Spiritual Assembly from 1946-1954. Inspired by the words of Abdu’l-Baha, she spent a decade in Africa as a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency. In addition to working on cultural and educational programs, she created the agency’s first women’s activities program in Africa.

More than seven decades after standing up for truth in her classroom, Dr. Austin delivered a lecture in which she talked about the necessity at times of protesting nonviolently for justice.


Dr. Helen Elsie Austin“If we go about it with faith,” she said, “with intelligent protest, standing up and demonstrating what the right attitude and motivation is for human progress, we can cause progress.

"After all, the battle we face is essentially a spiritual battle to transform the souls and spirits of human beings,” she said, “to empower them to express love and justice, and to develop a unity of conscience."

Dr. H. Elsie Austin died at age 96 in 2004 in San Antonio.