Owen Hein taught history at ETHS for 37 years before retiring in 2004

It took 10 years for Owen Hein to join the Baha’i Faith. Ten years to study it from every angle and conclude that, more than any other religion, it spoke to his passion – eliminating racial inequality.

“Baha’u'llah said, ‘Close your eyes to racial differences and welcome all with the light of oneness,’” Mr. Hein told those who gathered recently at Transitions Bookplace in Chicago to hear his account of becoming a Baha’i in 1992.

Mr. Hein’s personal campaign to end racial injustice began when he was 15 and his United Church of Christ youth group went to Chicago to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“His speech about breaking down barriers changed my life,” Mr. Hein says.

Growing up west of Chicago in an all-white suburb, he picked up the vibe that racism didn’t exist. After listening to the Rev. King, Mr. Hein realized it did and made the commitment to work for racial equality.

His efforts garnered him several awards at Evanston Township High School, in Evanston, Ill. where he taught history for 37 years before retiring in 2004. He recently was named one of the 2007 Vision Keepers at the recent Interfaith Action of Evanston’s annual awards dinner. Presenters said award recipients “grace every life they touch and encourage all of us to reaffirm our own visions.”

When Mr. Hein entered the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1959 he brought with him more than bedding and books. He brought his dedication to righting the wrongs that stretched back to slave times in the United States.

First, he joined the United Church of Christ student group, and then the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).

“If African-Americans walked into most stores in Urbana-Champaign in the early ‘60s, they were treated as invisible,” Mr. Hein says. “Store owners who would serve blacks were asked to put a sticker in their window. But they wouldn’t because they thought it was too controversial.”

When SNCC leaders asked whites to leave the organization so blacks could succeed on their own, Mr. Hein wasn’t offended. He merely took his efforts elsewhere. He didn’t know it at the time, he says, but his perseverance was in line with the Baha’i writings:

“Let the white make a supreme effort in their resolve to contribute their share to the solution of this problem, to abandon once for all their usually inherent and at times subconscious sense of superiority, to correct their tendency towards revealing a patronizing attitude towards the members of the other race. . . to persuade them through their intimate, spontaneous and informal association with them of the genuineness of their friendship and the sincerity of their intentions. . .”

After receiving his master’s degree in history, Mr. Hein accepted a teaching position at Evanston Township High School, which, he says, “looked like the perfect place to be at the time because of its desegregated school system.”

“Evanston was very segregated then,” says Mr. Hein, who is a resident of the town just north of Chicago. “Blacks had a separate hospital and YMCA.” At the school he pioneered global humanities studies, spent a lot of time “talking to black kids,” taught the history of Africa and slavery, and was the faculty advisor to the black prom – yet another form of segregation.

“The kids thought I was cool,” he says with a smile.

Nevertheless, he says, he lacked a spiritual home. In college he drifted away from the United Church of Christ because “congregants were saying the church was the primary salvation of the individual soul, and I was looking for something that would also save the world.”

Taking his own lead in teaching global studies, Mr. Hein began investigating a variety of world religions. He tried each one on, but couldn’t find a perfect fit. Then he discovered the Baha’i Faith. To his delight, he learned that it views the world’s major religions as part of a single, progressive process through which God reveals His will to humanity.

Mr. Hein says he became a Baha’i mostly because of the Faith’s core beliefs in unity and eliminating prejudice.

“Baha’u'llah said when you fall in love with God, prejudice disappears,” he says. “The Baha’i Faith gives us a passageway to the oneness of humanity.”

Mr. Hein has been using that passageway as a volunteer at Carepoint, a Chicago-area family services center that educates people on how to prevent HIV and avoid substance abuse.

When helping those less fortunate, Mr. Hein says he keeps the following words of Baha’u'llah in mind:

“Blessed is the man who hath detached himself from all else but Me, hath soared in the atmosphere of My love, hath gained admittance into My Kingdom, gazed upon My realms of glory, quaffed the living waters of My bounty, hath drunk his fill from the heavenly river of My loving providence, acquainted himself with My Cause, apprehended that which I concealed within the treasury of My Words, and hath shone forth from the horizon of divine knowledge engaged in My praise and glorification. Verily, he is of Me. Upon him rest My mercy, My loving-kindness, My bounty and My glory.”