Dorothy Height Retires Expenses on Mortgage at Birthday Bash

by Jamie Walker

 

Washington, D.C.—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 90^th birthday in style at a gala dinner Wednesday March 20, 2002 in the Grand Ballroom at the J.W. Marriott Hotel. Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover served as master 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 exquisite gala dinner was actually one of several special NCNW festive celebrations that took place during Height’s birthday week, which started Tuesday March 19, 2002 when Height and U.S. Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, announced their establishment of a partnership to “ignite a movement in communities across the country to close the achievement gap for African-American 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 in January 2002 seeking to “reduce the difference in the percentage of white versus African-American 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 than white 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. We will work with Dr. Height and NCNW to challenge our entire country to work together on closing the achievement gap. The task before us is great, but the goal is certainly within our reach. Together, we will leave no child behind.”

Height couldn’t agree with Paige more when she asserted, “Every year lost in a child’s education could 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.”

Of course, it was very fitting for Dr. Height to be honored during women’s history month at her gala dinner last Wednesday celebrating her historic achievements and continuing legacy of leadership to the struggle for women’s rights, racial justice, and equality.

“Dr. Dorothy 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. I was listening to her tonight and watching her and ever since I’ve known Dorothy Height—it must be thirty years now—she’s been a peaceful woman. She has learned how to keep going and to keep achieving and to keep climbing—really in spite of—and she’s never become bitter."

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 dear urging of Mrs. Bethune who would later 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.”

Before Mrs. Bethune asked Dorothy to join NCNW, for example, she had already been actively involved in her community. While working for the NY Welfare Department, for example, Height was the first black named to deal with the Harlem riots of 1935 and was already considered “one of the young leaders of the National Youth Movement of the New Deal era.” She worked to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed forces, reform the criminal justice system, and also helped to establish free access to public accommodations.

Working with NCNW, Height integrated her training as a social 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 from behind the podium at the lavish gala 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.”

King was then welcomed with applause from other distinguished guests at Dr. Height’s 90^th birthday celebration who came in support of both Height and Angelou, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Kwesi Mfume president of the NAACP, Marion Barry, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Don King, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, veteran network journalist Renee Poussaint, motivational speaker Susan L. Taylor, author and activist Dick Gregory, Mayor Anthony Williams, and Jeff Majors who opened the evening with an invocation played on his arresting, heavenly, and melodious harp of the 23^rd psalm.

         It was when Dr. Height, the legendary civil rights activist who has received numerous appointments and awards—including being inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993—gave her incredible extemporaneous speech announcing that NCNW still needed to raise a total of $5million to pay-off the mortgage on the historic 633 Pennsylvania Avenue property where NCNW is now headquartered, that boxing promoter Don King (with his initial donation of $110,000) inspired Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover to begin rallying everyone in the room to come to Dorothy’s aid.

        “Help me make Dorothy smile, as the Dorothy in the ‘Wizard of Oz,’” King said, but not before first announcing his $500,000 fundraising challenge to all of the distinguished guests in the audience who he knew was in the position to help retire the expenses on NCNW’s mortgage. “Let’s not talk about giving [Dorothy] some pie in the sky when she dies,” King continued. “Let’s give her something sound on the ground while she’s around. To make Dorothy’s birthday wish come true, I need nine people to raise $500,000 or 20 people at $250,000.”

       King then turned to Oprah with a smile and encouraged her to join in the bidding. “I am donating $110,000,” King explained, standing behind the podium.  “Help me, Oprah. What are you donating?”

       Oprah laughed and smiled in return, her neck “dripping in diamonds,” before she slowly leaned forward into the microphone to announce ever so eloquently: “Thank you very much, Brother King, 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 Oprah (and cheered with excitement), but they also gave Oprah, the incredibly gifted, influential actor and talk-show host who owns her own production company and reaches more than 22 million U.S. viewers with The Oprah Winfrey Show, a wondrous applause.

       “I would not be here tonight were it not for the bridges that I have crossed over on to get to this side,” Oprah admitted honestly. “There are many of you who are sitting here who have allowed Dr. Height, Dr. King, Mrs. King—those whose names who have made the history books and those whose names you will never know who have been bridges to the future—to [help us achieve] the dreams that we are now living. So I would just say that we are going to close this out—this evening—or else we are not going home.”

         Of course, the audience cheered again in support of Oprah before she explained, “I would just encourage you as you are thinking about ‘Do I have it? Can I do it? How much do I have? What will this mean to me next week? Will I be able to pay my bills?’ Just think about where you have come from and write the check in thanksgiving to where you’ve come from. And where you are right now. It’ll make it a little easier on yourself when you think about it.”

Oprah said, “I could not be who I am, what I am, doing what I do, standing where I stand had it not been for [Dr. Height], Mary McLeod Bethune, and so many others who have made this dream possible for me—only in America.”

With this, Don King smiled and again encouraged, “Let’s give! Let’s give!”

It was then that Oprah, 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, Danny Glover (who donated $100,000 in memory of his mother), Coca-Cola, the Freddie Mac Foundation, the National Medical Association, Anheuser-Busch, 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 Oprah’s call, pushing the $5million needed for the mortgage way “over the mark.” Danny and Oprah—both ecstatic much like Don King and 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 in deep admiration and profound gratitude after the Urban Nation H.I.P.—H.O.P. Choir of Washington, D.C. sang praises to her in celebration of her historic, legendary, and ground-breaking achievements.   “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 I 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 response to the historic property located at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Lincoln once posed to have his pictures taken and slaves were once bought, beaten, and sold right in front of the building, Height stated, “We sit between the White House and the Capitol. I did not know. I read the story in the Washington Post. But in 1848, that was the site of the largest attempt of slaves to escape into the Underground Railroad. It was thirteen years before the Civil War and the faces of the two sisters (Mary and Emily Edmondson) that you will see there [on your 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.”

          A teary-eyed Height said, “I cannot help but to believe that the hands of God—that that land has already been paid.”

Dorothy was greeted with a moving, thunderous applause 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 a thousand Height fans and supporters, and concluded: “You and I have the opportunity now—we’ve done it tonight—to claim [this historic property] 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 deacon-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.”

“I feel so proud,” confided Susan L. Taylor who has known Dorothy Height for several years now and knew Height felt especially honored to finally have the NCNW mortgage paid. “That’s the real tribute to Dr. Dorothy Height, you know. And that’s why we’re all here. I mean, quite honestly, Maya Angelou just gives herself away. She doesn’t need another award. She doesn’t even have a space on her mantel for another award. Maya came tonight because we know that Dr. Dorothy has given us every moment of our lives. I know Dr. Dorothy,” Susan said in closing. “She doesn’t have a personal life. We are her personal life. So tonight I feel so proud of my people, you know, and those African-Americans who represent major corporations stepped up to the table with hundreds of thousands of dollars. And my sister, Oprah Winfrey who got her plane out and flew here from Chicago, retired half of the mortgage! So what I am saying to everybody is well done!”