Honoring the Passing of Dr. Dorothy Irene Height – An Extraordinary American

By Leecia Eve on 04/20/2010 @ 06:00 PM

I, along with millions of Americans and people around the world, learned this morning of the passing of Dr. Dorothy Irene Height. She was 98 years young.

My emotions were mixed when I heard the news. My heart literally ached and part of me wanted to cry because we would never again have a chance to see this great American. Yet, I also smiled, knowing that a woman who had given so much to this country and who had lived such a long and fulfilled life is no longer in any discomfort and is now at peace. If you believe in heaven, and you know even a little something about Dr. Height’s work and legacy, you know she is already there.

Words like “icon” and “leader” don’t do Dr. Height justice. She was one of the preeminent social and civil rights activists of our time and was an unwavering and tireless advocate for equality, justice and human rights for all people. She was also a wonderfully gracious, dignified, stylish and beautiful human being.

At the age of 21, in 1933, Dorothy Height became a leader of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. It was during this period that Height's career as a civil rights advocate began to unfold, as she worked to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed forces, and reform the criminal justice system. She later became Vice President of the organization and in this capacity was chosen as one of ten American youth delegates to the World Conference on Life and Work of the Churches in Oxford, England. Two years later, in 1939, she served as a representative of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) to the World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam, Holland.

The year 1937 was a major turning point in her life as at the time she was serving as Assistant Executive Director of the Harlem YWCA when Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), noticed the young Dorothy who was escorting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt into the NCNW meeting. Mrs. Bethune invited Height to join NCNW in her quest for women's rights to full and equal employment, pay and education.

The following year, Dr. Height was one of ten young adults Eleanor Roosevelt invited to spend a weekend at her Hyde Park, New York home to help plan and prepare for the World Youth Conference that was to be held at Vassar College.

Dr. Height was mentored as a young woman by Eleanor Roosevelt and advised presidents, including President Dwight Eisenhower, whom she encouraged to desegregate schools and President Lyndon Johnson, whom she pressed to appoint African American women to positions in government.

For forty years she led the National Council of Negro Women, a position to which she was appointed upon the retirement of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. She was at the forefront of AIDS education, both nationally and internationally, and played an integral role in the global work of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the largest African American sorority, with more than 350,000 members. She was the only woman of the "Big Six" civil rights leaders, which included Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, James Farmer, and Roy Wilkins, while strategies were developed for the civil rights movement. Her work over decades with the YWCA led to its integration at all levels and greater involvement in the civil rights movement. In August 1994, President Clinton awarded Dr. Height the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

During the more than four years that I served as then-U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate Counsel, I was privileged to have spent some time with Dr. Height. Indeed, it was my honor to have helped draft the bill that Senator Clinton introduced in 2002 and again in 2003 – and that Congresswoman Diane Watson introduced in the House – which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to her.

I remember well the March 2004 Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in which congressional leader after leader, on both sides of the aisle, spoke of Dr. Height’s contributions and why she was such a worthy recipient. President Bush even came to the Capitol to attend the ceremony to laud her contributions and personally present the award to her. For about 90 minutes, in a major election year when emotions were running high, partisan politics were put completely aside and warmth filled the august room. We all knew we were in the presence of greatness and whether you were the President of the United States, a Member of Congress, Hollywood actress, industry leader, congressional staffer, fellow civil rights advocate, family member or friend, I had the sense that we all felt that if we each tried to be a bit more like Dr. Height, our country – our world – would, without question, be a better place.

For people who knew them both, it wasn’t a surprise that Senator Clinton introduced a bill to honor Dr. Height as they had known each for many years and I had some sense of how much the extraordinary woman Hillary Rodham Clinton admired, really revered, Dr. Height.

I am grateful for many opportunities I had to meet a variety of public servants – both in and outside government – while working for Senator Clinton, but one of the highlights was when Senator Clinton invited me to join her and Dr. Height for lunch in the Senate Dining Room.

I’m sorry to say I don’t remember all of the details of what was said as I tried simultaneously to listen and learn from Dr. Height, eat (which I could barely do), and watch as literally every member in the Senate who was in the dining room at the time came by our table to pay his or her respects to Dr. Height. What I do recall is that though she was more than twice my age – then in her early 90s – both her wit and her memory were better than mine. She told stories about providing counsel to presidents and working on a number of issues with Eleanor Roosevelt. She and Senator Clinton joked and laughed just like any two girlfriends would over a fun lunch but they also talked about the difficult challenges that continued to confront so many American families and the work that still needed to be done to improve their lives.

Dr. Height has said that “[w]ithout community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It’s important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It’s the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.”

Dr. Height spent her entire adult life providing extraordinary community service to our nation. She definitely practiced what she preached. May she now rest in peace.

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