Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 April 2002 — Page 4

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THE INDIANAPOUS RECORDER

FRIDAY, APRIL 5,2002

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Longtime National Council of Negro Women leader honored

Dorothy Height’s birthday dinner brings donations to pay NCNW mortgage

By JAMIE WALKER For The Recorder WASHINGTON — Dorothy Irene Height, the legendary civil rights icon and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) who has dedicated more than half a century to the struggle for equality and human rights, celebrated her 90th birthday at a gala dinner March 20 in the Grand Ballroom at the Marriott Hotel. Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover served as masters of ceremonies at the gala appropriately titled “Uncommon Height: the Lady, the Legacy, the Legend” in which poet Maya Angelou was also honored with the distinguished “Uncommon Dorothy I. Height” award. The dinner was one of several special NCNW celebrations that took place during Height’s birthday week, which started March 19 when Height and U.S. Secretary of Education Ron Paige announced their establishment of a partnership to “ignite a movement in communities across the country to close the achievement gap for AfricanAmerican children and to leave no child behind.” The partnership with Paige comes in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act that President Bush signed into law last January seeking to “reduce the difference in the percentage of white vs. AfricanAmerican students performing at the proficient level.” According to the 2000 National Assessment of Education Progress (NEAP), for example, 28 percent more white than African-American fourth graders read at the proficient level and 29 percent more white than African-American fourth graders perform at the proficient level in math. “When President Bush says he wants to leave no child behind, he means it literally,” Paige said. “Every child in America must have access to a quality education. Our new Partnership for Academic Achievement will help bring to life the principles of this law.” Height couldn’ t agree with Paige more when she asserted, “Every year lost in achild’seducationcould be a child lost. The National Council of Negro Women and its affiliates who have a major concern for education are strongly committed to helping close the achievement gap. We accept the challenge of harnessing our womanpower to create a culture of academic achievement.” “Dr. Height is a phenomenal woman,” said Congresswoman Maxine Waters in praise of the civil rights icon at the gala. "She’s one of a kind and for those of us who have the experience of working with her. we’ve all learned from her in so many ways.” Height, known for her extensive international developmental work, contributions in interfaith, interracial, and ecumenical work, joined the National Council of Negro Women after Mary McLeod Bethune, NCNW founder and president, asked her to join the staff to help in the quest “for women's rights to full and equal employment, pay, and education.” “I was on the staff of the Harlem YWCA and I was given an assignment to escort Eleanor Roosevelt into a meeting Mrs. Bethune was having,” Height said. “And it turned out to be a meeting of the National

Council of Negro Women. Mrs. Bethune asked me my name and said ‘Come back, we need you’ and I’ve been back ever since.” The year was 1937 and since assuming a leadership position at NCNW at the urging of Mrs. Bethune who would become the young activist’s life-long friend and mentor, Height has worked tirelessly on behalf of her own people, lifting as she climbs, destined to accomplish Bethune’s dream of “leaving no one behind.” Working with NCNW, Height integrated her training as a social “When I lived (to see) something like this — and many of you heard me say that there is a difference between having a job and a life’s work — you realize you still have work to do.” worker and her fierce determination to rise above the limitations imposed on her race and sex, caused her to rise “like dust” (to quote Maya Angelou) through the ranks of the YWCA. She assumed the presidency of NCNW in 1957, where she remained until 1998 “strengthening child labor laws and education initiatives, helping groups of African-American women and their families to recognize and get the training they need to take economic control of their communities for now and generations to come.” “Dr. Height has been a great inspiration to me for many years,” Coretta Scott King said at the dinner. “She has been that female representative for all of us in the early days of the civil rights movement when there weren’t any other women around when the men were making the decisions. Dorothy allowed us to be there. She represented all of us and she has continued to even before and afterward.” Others at the dinner included Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton; Kwesi Mfume, president of the NAACP; Washington City Council member Marion Barry; the Rev. A1 Sharpton; boxing promoter Don King; veteran network journalist Renee Poussaint; motivational speaker Susan L. Taylor; author and activist Dick Gregory; and Mayor Anthony Williams. After Dr. Height gave an extemporaneous speech announcing that NCNW still needed to raise $5 million to pay off the mortgage on the historic property at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue where NCNW is now headquartered, that Winfrey and Glover began rallying everyone in the room tocome to Height’s

aid.

Glover, for instance, turned to Winfrey from behind the podium with a generous smile and said, “I am donating $100,000. What are you donating Oprah?” Oprah then laughed and smiled in return, her neck “dripping in diamonds,” be#6re she slowly leaned forward into the microphone to announce ever so eloquently: “Thank you very much, Danny, but I have already committed to donating 2.5!” That is, $2.5 million toward NCNW’s mortgage. Upon hearing such news, the audience not only laughed along with Winfrey (and cheered with excitement), but they also gave Oprah, the gifted, influential actor and talk-show host who

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It was then that Winfrey, looking most graceful in her long, flowing, white ball gown descended the steps from the stage with the microphone still in her hand and walked out into the audience-as she would on The Oprah Winfrey Show — going from table to table asking, “How much can you give?” By the end of the evening, CocaCola, the Freddie Mac Foundation, the National Medical Association, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the NAACP, Coretta Scott King, Susan L. Taylor, holistic gynecologist Denise Davis and her husband, and countless others heeded Winfrey’scall, pushing the $5 million needed for the mortgage way “over the mark.” Glover and Winfrey, both ecstatic like everyone else in the room, lovingly asserted that Dorothy “still had money left over for furniture in the building, office supplies, and operating expenses.” “Thank you. Thank you,” said Dr. Height with profound gratitude. “In the name of the National Council of Negro Women and all of our board and staff members, we just want to say thank you. I also want to say to you that this, for me, is more than just gift. It gives me a kind of new sense of steam.” Height said, “When I lived (to see) something like this — and many of you heard me say that there is a difference between having a job and a life’s work — you realize you still have work to do. You can be grateful for what we have become thus far. I cannot tell you how blessed I am that we have satisfied our goal and 1 want to assure you that we will not only try to move forward, but we will continue to let the work fulfill the legacy Mary McLeod Bethune.” In telling about the historic property located at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Lincoln once posed to have his pictures taken, and where slaves were once bought, beaten, and sold right in front of the building. Height said, “We sit between the White House and the Capitol. In 1848, that was the site of the largest attempt of slaves to escape into the Underground Railroad. It was 13 years before the Civil War and the faces of the two sisters (Mary and Emily Edmondson) that you will see there (on the dinner program) were about to join their four brothers on the Schooner Pearl. But all of the slaves were captured and brought back and sold, beaten and bought at Seventh and Pennsylvania Avenue.” Dorothy was greeted with a moving ovation before she announced that Paul Johnson, a descendant of the two sisters whose freedom Rev. Henry Ward Beecher eventually purchased (Beecher’s sister Harriet Stowe patterned her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin after this incident), was also in the room. “Stand up Mr. Johnson,” she said, acknowledging his presence. She then looked out over the audience, filled with over 1,000 Height fans and supporters, and concluded: “You and I have the opportunity now — we’ve done it tonight — to claim it and say slavery might have been here just as we’ve looked at, but now this will be a site where African-American women and families will be bea-con-like for justice and equality and freedom not only here, but throughout the world. We have reclaimed our history tonight and I thank you very much.” Jamie Walker is a freelance writer and author of the forthcoming book, 101 Ways Black Women Can Learn to Love Themselves. She can be reached via e-mail at jamiedwalkerQyahoo.com or through her Web site www.jamiewalker.org.