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Books by
Barack
Obama
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the
American Dream
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Funeral
Service for Dorothy Height
(March 24, 1912 – April 20,
2010)
Eulogy by Barack Obama
President of the United States
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Please be
seated. Let me begin by saying a word to Dr. Dorothy
Height's sister, Ms. Aldridge. To some, she was a
mentor. To all, she was a friend. But to you, she
was family, and my family offers yours our sympathy
for your loss.
We are gathered
here today to celebrate the life, and mourn the
passing, of
Dr. Dorothy Height. It is fitting that
we do so here, in our National Cathedral of Saint
Peter and Saint Paul. Here, in a place of great
honor. Here, in the House of God. Surrounded by the
love of family and of friends. The love in this
sanctuary is a testament to a life lived
righteously; a life that lifted other lives; a life
that changed this country for the better over the
course of nearly one century here on Earth.
Michelle and I
didn't know Dr. Height as well, or as long, as many
of you. We were reminded during a previous moment in
the service, when you have a nephew who's 88—you've
lived a full life.
But we did come
to know her in the early days of my campaign. And we
came to love her, as so many loved her. We came to
love her stories. And we loved her smile. And we
loved those hats—that she wore like
a crown—regal. In the White House, she was a
regular. She came by not once, not twice—21 times
she stopped by the White House. Took part in our discussions around
health care reform in her final months.
Last February,
I was scheduled to see her and other civil rights
leaders to discuss the pressing problems of
unemployment—Reverend
Sharpton, Ben Jealous of the NAACP, Marc Morial of
the National Urban League. Then we discovered that
Washington was about to be blanketed by the worst
blizzard in record—two
feet of snow.
So I suggested
to one of my aides, we should call Dr. Height and
say we're happy to reschedule the meeting. Certainly
if the others come, she should not feel obliged.
True to form, Dr. Height insisted on coming, despite
the blizzard, never mind that she was in a
wheelchair. She was not about to let just a bunch of
men—in this meeting. It
was only when the car literally could not get to her
driveway that she reluctantly decided to stay home.
But she still sent a message—about
what needed to be done.
And I tell that
story partly because it brings a smile to my face,
but also because it captures the quiet, dogged,
dignified persistence that all of us who loved Dr.
Height came to know so well—an
attribute that we understand she learned early on.
Born in the
capital of the old Confederacy, brought north by her
parents as part of that great migration, Dr. Height
was raised in another age, in a different America,
beyond the experience of many. It's hard to imagine,
I think, life in the first decades of that last
century when the elderly woman that we knew was only
a girl. Jim Crow ruled the South. The Klan was on
the rise—a
powerful political force. Lynching was all too often
the penalty for the offense of black skin. Slaves
had been freed within living memory, but too often,
their children, their grandchildren remained
captive, because they were denied justice and denied
equality, denied opportunity, denied a chance to
pursue their dreams.
The progress
that followed—progress that so many of you helped
to achieve, progress that ultimately made it
possible for Michelle and me to be here as President
and First Lady—that
progress came slowly.
Progress came
from the collective effort of multiple generations
of Americans. From preachers and lawyers, and
thinkers and doers, men and women like Dr. Height,
who took it upon themselves—often at great risk—to change this country for the better. From men
like W. E. B. Du Bois and
A. Philip Randolph; women
like
Mary McLeod Bethune and
Betty Friedan—they're
Americans whose names we know. They are leaders
whose legacies we teach. They are giants who fill
our history books. Well,
Dr. Dorothy Height deserves
a place in this pantheon. She, too, deserves a place
in our history books. She, too, deserves
a place of honor in America's memory.
Look at her
body of work. Desegregating the YWCA. Laying the
groundwork for integration on Wednesdays in
Mississippi. Lending pigs to poor farmers as a
sustainable source of income. Strategizing with
civil rights leaders, holding her own, the only
woman in the room, Queen Esther to this Moses
Generation—even as she led the National Council
of Negro Women with vision and energy— with vision and energy, vision and class.
But we remember
her not solely for all she did during the civil
rights movement. We remember her for all she did
over a lifetime, behind the scenes, to broaden the
movement's reach. To shine a light on stable
families and tight-knit communities. To make us see
the drive for civil rights and women's rights not as
a separate struggle, but as part of a larger
movement to secure the rights of all humanity,
regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless
of ethnicity.
It's an
unambiguous record of righteous work, worthy of
remembrance, worthy of recognition. And yet, one of
the ironies is, is that year after year, decade in,
decade out,
Dr.Height went about her work quietly,
without fanfare, without self-promotion. She never
cared about who got the credit. She didn't need to
see her picture in the papers. She understood that
the movement gathered strength from the bottom up,
those unheralded men and women who don't always make
it into the history books but who steadily insisted
on their dignity, on their manhood and womanhood.
She wasn't interested in credit. What she cared
about was the cause. The cause of justice. The cause
of equality. The cause of opportunity. Freedom's
cause.
And that
willingness to subsume herself, that humility and
that grace, is why we honor
Dr. Dorothy Height As
it is written in the Gospel of Matthew: "For whoever
exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles
himself will be exalted." I don't think the author
of the Gospel would mind me rephrasing: "whoever
humbles herself will be exalted."
One of my
favorite moments with
Dr.Height—this was just a
few months ago—we
had decided to put up the Emancipation Proclamation
in the Oval Office, and we invited some elders to
share reflections of the movement. And she came and
it was an inter-generational event, so we had young
children there, as well as elders, and the elders
were asked to share stories. And she talked about
attending a dinner in the 1940s at the home of
Dr.
Benjamin Mays, then president of Morehouse College.
And seated at the table that evening was a
15-year-old student, "a gifted child," as she
described him, filled with a sense of purpose, who
was trying to decide whether to enter medicine, or
law, or the ministry.
And many years
later, after that gifted child had become a gifted
preacher—I'm sure he had been told to be on his
best behavior—after
he led a bus boycott in Montgomery, and inspired a
nation with his dreams, he delivered a sermon on
what he called "the drum major instinct" —a sermon
that said we all have the desire to be first, we all
want to be at the front of the line.
The great test
of a life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, is to
harness that instinct; to redirect it towards
advancing the greater good; toward changing a
community and a country for the better; toward doing
the Lord's work.
I sometimes
think Dr. King must have had Dorothy Height in mind
when he gave that speech. For Dorothy Height met the
test. Dorothy Height embodied that instinct. Dorothy
Height was a drum major for justice. A drum major
for equality. A drum major for freedom. A drum major
for service. And the lesson she would want us to
leave with today—a lesson she lived out each and
every day—is that we can all be first in service.
We can all be drum majors for a righteous cause. So
let us live out that lesson. Let us honor her life
by changing this country for the better as long as
we are blessed to live. May God bless Dr. Dorothy
Height and the union that she made more perfect.
Source:
NYTimes
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Dorothy Irene Height
March
24, 1912 – April 20, 2010
By Maya Angelou
For nearly half a
century, Dorothy Irene Height gave leadership to the
struggle for equality and human rights for all people. Her
life exemplified her passionate commitment for a just
society and her vision of a better world. Born in Richmond,
Virginia, and educated in the public schools in Rankin, PA,
she enrolled in New York University and earned a bachelor
and master’s degrees in four years. She did further
postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York
School of Social Work. |
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Employed in many capacities by both government
and social service associations, she was known primarily by her
leadership role with the YWCA and the National Council of Negro
Women. November 7, 1937 was the turning point in the life of Dorothy
Height for she met Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of the
Harlem YWCA who was escorting Eleanor Roosevelt into a NCNW meeting.
Height answered Mrs. Bethune’s call for help and joined her in her
quest for women’s rights to equal employment, pay and education.
Height was elected national president of Delta
Sigma Theta Sorority in 1947 and carried the sorority to a new level
of organizational development throughout her term, which ended in
1956. Her leadership training skills, social work background and
knowledge of volunteerism benefited the sorority as it moved into a
new era of activism on the national and international scenes. From
the presidency of Delta Sigma Theta, Height assumed the presidency
of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957.
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Height’s
international travels and studies, began in 1937, and
took her throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin
America. She was known for her extensive international
and developmental education work and these experiences
helped prepare her for moving the NCNW agenda into one
of cooperation and collaboration in response to the
needs of people, both domestically and internationally.
In 1974, Dr. Height was a delegate to the UNESCO
Conference on Women and Her Rights held in Kingston,
Jamaica. In 1975, she participated in the Tribunal at
the International Women’s Year Conference of the United
Nations at Mexico City.
Her distinguished
service and contributions to making the world a more
just and humane one have earned her 20 honorary degrees
and over 50 awards and honors from local, state, and
national organizations and the federal government. |
She received the John F.
Kennedy Memorial Award of the National Council for Jewish Women in
1965. For her contributions in the interfaith and interracial
movements, she was awarded the Ministerial Interfaith Association
Award in 1969.—MayaAngelouonPublicRadio
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ChickenBones Best Book of 2009
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The Bridge: The Life and
Rise of Barack Obama
By David Remnick
The Bridge
offers the most complete account
yet of Obama’s tragic father, a
brilliant economist who
abandoned his family and ended
his life as a beaten man; of his
mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who
had a child as a teenager and
then built her career as an
anthropologist living and
studying in Indonesia; and of
the succession of elite
institutions that first exposed
Obama to the social tensions and
intellectual currents that would
force him to imagine and fashion
an identity for himself. Through
extensive on-the-record
interviews with friends and
teachers, mentors and
disparagers, family members and
Obama himself, David Remnick
allows us to see how a rootless,
unaccomplished, and confused
young man created himself first
as a community organizer in
Chicago, an experience that
would not only shape his urge to
work in politics but give him a
home and a community, and that
would propel him to Harvard Law
School, where his sense of a
greater mission emerged. |
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posted 30 April 2010 |
