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 Re: وداعا دورثى هايتس (Dorothy Height) والدة وملكة حركة الحقوق المدنية بأمريكا (Re: Khalid Kodi)
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http://blackstarnews.com/
Dr. Dorothy Height: Extraordinary Leader, Lantern, and Role Model
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
By Marian Wright Edelman
April 20th, 2010
“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
Please post your comments directly or submit them to [email protected]
"Speaking Truth To Empower."
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Re: وداعا دورثى هايتس (Dorothy Height) والدة وملكة حركة الحقوق المدنية بأمريكا (Re: Khalid Kodi)
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Civil Rights Activist Dorothy Height Dies
by Allison Keyes
April 20, 2010
Legendary civil rights leader Dorothy Height, who spent most of her life battling for the empowerment of women and blacks and who had the ear of U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama, died Tuesday. She was 98.
She died of natural causes at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C.
In 1963, Height was the only woman on the speaker's platform when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. But she wasn't on the program for the March on Washington even though she was the nucleus of the meetings held by the mostly male civil rights leaders who planned it.
Every black woman, it seems to me, has to see Dorothy Height as an inspiration.
- Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's representative in Congress
Height told NPR in 2003 that the experience was uplifting despite the fact that a gospel singer was the only woman heard from the podium that day.
"My being seated there had some very special meaning because women had been trying to get a woman to speak on the program," Height said, "but we were always met by the planners with the idea that women were represented in all of the different groups, in the churches, in the synagogues, in the unions, organizations and the like. So the only voice we heard of a woman was that of Mahalia Jackson."
Though not a scheduled speaker, Daisy Bates was ultimately allowed to say a few words at the event.
Height said women in the movement met the next day to discuss ways to deal with the issues of racism and sexism.
"All of it was toward saying how can we bring all the people who need to understand the role that women have played, but also the predicament women face, and especially we who are women of color, where we’ve had both sex and racial discrimination as a characteristic of our lives," she said.
More On Dorothy Height
The Depth Of Dorothy Height
April 20, 2010
Height Recounts Meeting Mary McLeod Bethune
March 12, 2002
'Open Wide the Freedom Gates'
July 1, 2003
Dorothy Height: 'They Were There'
Aug. 27, 2003
Civil Rights Elder Sees Dream Come True
Nov. 6, 2008
By the 1960s, Height had already been focused on equality and fairness for more than 30 years. And she had dedicated her life to those battles.
'An Absolute Genius'
Dorothy Irene Height was born in Richmond, Va., on March 24, 1912, and grew up in Rankin, Pa. In high school, she won a scholarship to Barnard College after winning a national oratorical contest. But she arrived after Barnard had already admitted the two blacks it accepted per year at the time. Instead, Height earned her bachelor's and master’s degrees at New York University in four years and did postgraduate studies in social work. By 1933, Height was working against lynching and for reforms in the nation’s criminal justice system and for free access to public accommodations.
Height, who was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004, is perhaps best known for her work with the National Council of Negro Women. The group's headquarters in Washington, D.C., stands steps from where slaves were once traded in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. Height was president emerita of the NCNW.
Harvard professor Charles Ogletree called Height "an absolute genius."
"Everything that we do today is influenced by her sacrifices decades ago, her marches as a teenager against lynching, her buying a building right on Pennsylvania Avenue to in a sense to talk about the slave trade, and her commitment to open up doors for others is unparalleled," Ogletree said.
In 1937, Height was working with the YWCA in Harlem and was assigned to escort Eleanor Roosevelt into one of the Negro women's group meetings. NCNW founder Mary McLeod Bethune noticed Height and asked the young woman to join the organization’s quest for women's rights for full, equal employment, pay and education. In addition to her 33 years on the national board of the YWCA and her nearly 40 years with the NCNW, Height also served as national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. from 1947 to 1957. The tiny woman was known for her impeccable attire -- and her stylish, striking hats.
"Every black woman, it seems to me, has to see Dorothy Height as an inspiration," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's representative in Congress.
She said everyone who was either a feminist or in the civil rights struggle has worked with Height. But black women are not the only ones who were in awe of her, according to Holmes Norton.
"Dorothy Height gets the same kind of hush when she comes into a room full of white women," the lawmaker said.
Darlene Clark Hine, a professor of history and African-American studies at Northwestern University, said Height "was able to engender greater conversations -- dialog, communication -- between white and black women."
She said Height's ability to bridge racial, regional and class divides between women was important, but that it was her focus on education, voter registration and political mobilization that was vital to black women, who weren't able to engage in the political process at the same level as their white counterparts after women got the vote in 1920.
A Leader In The Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) said Height should be counted among the leaders of the movement. Her ability to distill a message and direction from a roomful of dissenting voices, he said, was extraordinary.
"Dorothy Height emerged at a time when there was male chauvinism at its height," Lewis said.
She "had the rare ability -- and I think part of it was just innate -- to sort of soothe the conflict, the division, the schism, and bring people together," Lewis said. "Being a woman, but more than just being a woman, she could say, 'Now brethren, now brothers and sisters,' and people listened to her."
Enlarge Bettmann/Corbis
Dorothy Height presents Eleanor Roosevelt with the Mary McLeod Bethune Human Rights Award in 1960. At the time, Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Bettmann/Corbis
Dorothy Height presents Eleanor Roosevelt with the Mary McLeod Bethune Human Rights Award in 1960. At the time, Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women.
Her fundraising abilities were legendary. "She could call her white sisters and Jewish sisters and others -- she could get on the telephone and call the Rockefellers, the Fords and others, and they'd listen to her," Lewis said.
Height continued to fight for equal justice up until the end of her life. In 2008, she told NPR -- while wearing a feathered purple chapeau with a fetching bow -- that there is unfinished business in civil rights.
"We don't need the marches we had in the past," she said. "But we need more consideration in looking at the boardroom tables and at the policies that are going on -- looking at what's happening in industry, what's happening in terms of employment opportunities, housing and the like."
And Height left a message for the young people she has worked with so passionately throughout her career. The younger generations, she said, are the beneficiaries of what a lot of people worked
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126128076
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Re: وداعا دورثى هايتس (Dorothy Height) والدة وملكة حركة الحقوق المدنية بأمريكا (Re: Khalid Kodi)
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دوروثي هايت
توفيت يوم الثلثاء الماضي الناشطة الأميركية في مجال الدفاع عن حقوق الإنسان في ستينيات القرن الماضي دوروثي هايت عن عمر ناهز الـ 98 عاماً.
وقال المتحدث باسم مستشفى جامعة هاورد الأميركية، رون هاريث، لشبكة «سي إن إن» الإخبارية الأميركية، إن هايت توفيت فجر الثلثاء الماضي.
- من مواليد مارس/ آذار العام 1912، في ريتشموند بولاية فيرجينيا الأميركية، لعائلة أميركية من أصول إفريقية.
- ناشطة اجتماعية في مجال الحقوق المدنية الأميركية، ومناضلة من أجل نيل الأفارقة الأميركيين لحقوقهم المدنية ومساواتهم مع البيض.
- من أبرز الشخصيات في مجال الدفاع عن الحقوق المدنية في الولايات المتحدة، إذ شاركت مع الشخصيات الحقوقية آنذاك مثل مارتن لوثر كنغ وجون لويس وفيليب راندولف.
- درست في كلية بارنارد العام 1929، وحصلت على درجة الدكتوراه من جامعة نيويورك في العام 1932، وعلى الماجستير في علم النفس التربوي العام 1933.
- في العام 1957، تم تعيينها رئيسة للمجلس الوطني للنساء السود، واستمرت في منصبها لغاية العام 1997.
- وشهدت هايت ذروة حركة الحقوق المدنية في ستينيات القرن الماضي، إذ ساهمت في جمع نساء سود وبيض لخلق حوار للتفاهم ونيل الحقوق.
- اشتهرت بمطالبة الرؤساء الأميركيين في فترة نضالها بتعيين المرأة الأميركية من أصول إفريقية في المناصب الحكومية.
- عملت مستشارة في الشئون الإفريقية بوزارة الخارجية الأميركية في سبعينيات القرن الماضي.
- وقفت هايت على المنصة ذاتها التي ألقى فيها مارتن لوثر كنغ خطابه في مارس/ آذار العام 1963 واستهلها بعبارته الشهيرة «لدي حلم».
- شاركت هايت كضيفة شرف خلال حفل تنصيب الرئيس الأميركي باراك أوباما في يناير/ كانون الثاني العام 2009.
- تعتبر من الشخصيات الأميركية من أصول إفريقية القليلة التي التقت الرئيس أوباما في البيت الأبيض مؤخراً، حيث ناقشت معه مسائل تتعلق بالأعراق والاقتصاد.
- في العام 1994، حازت على ميدالية الحرية الرئاسية، التي قدمها إليها الرئيس الأسبق بيل كلينتون.
- وفي العام 2004، حصلت على الميدالية الذهبية من الكونغرس.
- وصف الرئيس الأميركي باراك أوباما، هايت، بعد وفاتها، بأنها كانت «عرابة» حركة الدفاع عن الحقوق المدنية في أميركا، لافتاً إلى أنها كانت «المرأة الوحيدة التي خدمت في أعلى مراكز حركة الدفاع عن الحقوق المدنية، وواكبت كل المسيرات والأحداث المهمة طوال الوقت»، وأضاف أن هايت «ظلت حتى الأسابيع الأخيرة من حياتها وهي الفترة التي يسعى فيها كثيرون للاستمتاع بالراحة تواصل الكفاح من أجل أمتنا».
العزيز خالد كودي و يستمر النضال ..
May her soul rest in peace
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Khalid Kodi
Osman Musa
محمدين محمد اسحق
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست