Lesson 28: "There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions."
At her memorial service in 2010, Dorothy Irene Height was named by Barack Obama as "the godmother of the civil rights movement." That title was thoroughly deserved --her commitment to that cause was a lifelong one: as a child in Pittsburg she bumped up against the prejudices of the day when she was unable to use the local YWCA swimming pool. She unapologetically participated in anti-lynching campaigns as a high school student, and was later admitted to Barnard College on an oratory scholarship in 1929, but was unable to actually enter the institution on account of her race. Undeterred, she instead enrolled at New York University, and from there to Columbia's University School of Social Work.
Height's list of acheivements is far beyond the scope of this mere sketchcard post. Besides her incredible record on civil rights and women's rights activism, she enjoyed the role of president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years --a journey that began with a close friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and with its founder Mary McLeod Bethune. Integration was a particular passion of hers, likely prodded along by her childhood swimming pool encounter: in 1946 she successfully pushed the YWCA to integrate of all of its centers. The YWCA remained at the center of her world in many respects, almost certainly propelling her to also join in the fight for women's rights. In 1971 she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus --along with Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Shirley Chisholm (see Lesson #20 in this series). Height quietly but persistently pushed for a statue of her friend Mary McLeod Bethune to be erected in Lincoln Park, in Washington, D.C. --the first such monument erected on public land to honor an African-American woman.
Not only did Height stand on the stage with Martin Luther King during his famous "I Have A Dream" speech in 1963, she lived to an age where she could also stand on stage with Barack Obama at his presidential inauguration in 2009.
Recommended reading: Open Wide The Freedom Gates (a memoir that was later turned into a stage play "If This Hat Could Talk," itself an in-joke that remarks upon Height's personality quirk --the contrast of quiet, understated behaviour with outlandishly colourful, room-dominating hats).
Your homework for this week: view the Julian Bond interview of Dorothy Height in "Explorations in Black Leadership" at https://youtu.be/2kc-Y8pd__s #blacklivesmatter #dorothyheight #ifthishatcouldtalk #ncnw #dothework
