Dr. Dorothy Height: Extraordinary Leader, Lantern, and Role
Model

By Marian Wright Edelman

Black Star News - April 20th, 2010

http://blackstarnews.com/news/135/ARTICLE/6482/2010-04-20.html

"We African American Women seldom do just what we want to
do, but always what we have to do. I am grateful to have
been in a time and place where I could be a part of what was
needed."

This is the quote inscribed on Dr. Dorothy Height's
Congressional Gold Medal, just one of the many dozens of
awards Dr. Height received over her extraordinary life,
including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The brilliant
Dr. Height was a lantern and role model for millions of
women and a long haul social change agent blessed with
uncommon commitment and talent.

Her fingerprints are quietly embedded in many of the
transforming events of the last seven decades as Blacks,
women, and children pushed open and walked through
previously closed doors of opportunity. To me she was a
dearest friend, mentor, and role model, and the Children's
Defense Fund was blessed to have her serve on our board for
over 30 years. When she passed away on April 20 at age 98,
we all lost a treasure, a wise counselor, and a rock we
could always lean against for support in tough times.

Even as a young girl her speaking skills stood out. She
attended New York University in part with a $1,000
scholarship from a national oratorical contest sponsored by
the Elks (after being turned away by Barnard, which had
already reached its quota of two Negro students for the
year).

On November 7, 1937, which Dr. Height remembers as the day
that changed her life, she was the 25-year-old assistant
director of the Harlem YWCA and had been chosen to escort
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to a National Council of Negro
Women (NCNW) meeting, and there she met NCNW's founder and
president, the legendary Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune. Mrs.
Bethune was immediately impressed with Dr. Height. She
became Dr. Height's close friend and mentor, and in 1957,
two years after Mrs. Bethune's death, Dr. Height became
NCNW's president - a position she held until 1998, when she
became Chair and President Emerita.

During the Civil Rights Movement, while so many women were
playing vital roles that weren't featured in the spotlight,
Dr. Height was always up front with a seat at the table. She
was often the only woman in the room with Dr. King and the
rest of the "Big Six" group of male leaders as they planned
many of the Civil Rights Movement's key strategies, and she
was sitting on the stage - she should have been a speaker - at
the historic March on Washington.

She led the NCNW membership as active participants in the
movement and reminded us that women were its backbone - unseen
but strong. One of the cornerstones of NCNW's civil rights
strategies was Wednesdays in Mississippi, which brought
together White and Black northern women to travel to
Mississippi to develop relationships with Black and White
southern women, educate themselves and each other, and
create bridges of understanding between the North and South
and across racial and class lines.

Later, NCNW developed a range of model national programs
focused on Black women's and families' needs including
employment, child care, housing, hunger, health care, and
youth development. Dr. Height began the NCNW's wonderful
Black Family Reunion Celebrations twenty-five years ago,
emphasizing the traditional values and strengths of Black
families at a time when too many people focused on the Black
family's "breakdown."

Dr. Height always understood how African Americans' needs
connect to a larger global mission as well. She participated
in conferences and leadership training sessions and on
official delegations around the world, and from the White
House to the United Nations, her expertise on civil rights,
women's rights, and human rights was always in demand.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's and Africa's
first woman president, is just one of the many people who
has said she owes a debt to Dr. Height's leadership.

Through it all, Dr. Height's intellect and strength remained
as sharp as her signature sense of style. A musical based on
her life was named "If This Hat Could Talk," and anyone who
knew Dr. Height and her trademark gorgeous hats understands
just how that title was chosen. When Dr. Height was awarded
her Congressional Gold Medal, then-Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton began her tribute by saying she had known Dr. Height
for more than thirty years, since they first began working
together on the Children's Defense Fund's board - and "just as
in those long ago days, today once again, Dr Height is the
best dressed woman in the entire room."

I personally and CDF were always profoundly inspired by and
grateful for her extraordinary example of leadership and
service. In 1990, Dr. Height co-convened with Dr. John Hope
Franklin and the Children's Defense Fund a quiet but
landmark meeting of 22 Black leaders in 1990 at the
beautiful Rockefeller Foundation conference center in
Bellagio, Italy that launched the Black Community Crusade
for Children (BCCC) committed to Leave No Child Behind.

We committed to weave and reweave the rich fabric of family
and community that historically have been the cornerstones
of the healthy development of Black children; to tap into
and strengthen the strong Black community tradition of self-
help; to rebuild the bridges between the Black middle class
and poor; to assist and galvanize current Black leadership
around specific goals for children; and to identify, train,
nurture, link and empower a new generation of effective
Black servant-leaders under the age of 30.

Since that 1990 meeting, over 10,000 Black college-age and
high school youths have been trained at CDF-Haley Farm near
Knoxville, Tennessee; community service models like the
summer CDF Freedom Schools program, a reading enrichment and
child empowerment program which has served over 80,000
children between the ages of 5-15, have been established at
sites across the country; and CDF-Haley Farm has become the
center for spiritual renewal and leadership development and
the incubator of new community models like the Harlem
Children's Zone for the 21st century children's movement.
The Bethune-Height house at Haley Farm is named in Dr.
Height's honor.

We all needed Dr. Height's example of steadfastly doing what
she had to do. Now we must do what we have to do to save all
of our children.

[Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's
Defense Fund]

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