Five Lessons from Civil Rights Activist Dorothy Height

The late and widely-lamented Dorothy Height, who died at the age of 98 last week, was a uniquely-gifted advocate. She played a lead, though often behind-the-scenes role in securing a host of major policy changes. She had the respect — and ears — of policymakers across the political spectrum.

I've watched Dr. Height from afar since my early days as a civil rights analyst and advocate. And I've thought a lot about her approach. Here are five lessons I've learned.

1. Build relationships. Height knew and influenced a vast number of people, from the bottom to the top of the income scale and from left to right. She lobbied Eleanor Roosevelt to speak out for civil rights, something FDR thought politically unwise. She prodded President Eisenhower to act aggressively on school desegregation. Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush both paid tribute to her.

Along the way, Height organized poor Southern farmers into cooperative "pig banks" and black and white Northern women into on-the-ground support teams for the civil rights struggle in Mississippi. She befriended and advised black leaders as disparate as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

There's a shrewdness here, a focus on strategic interests. But also, I think, a readiness to look beyond differences and find common ground. And something that's often viewed as irrelevant, if not counterproductive — civility.

2. Forge coalitions. One of the extraordinary things about Height was her holistic view of economic and social justice. For example, as the feminist movement gained steam in the 1970's, there were significant tensions between its activists and those in the continuing struggle for racial equality. But Height reached across the divide, joining with prominent white feminists to form the National Women's Political Caucus.

She didn't always agree with them on tactics, but she understood the value of a united front on common issues. "A Negro woman has the same problems as other women," she said, "but she can't take the same things for granted." And Height brought other black women along with her. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton credits her with "helping black women understand that you had to be a feminist at the same time you were African.

3. Put the cause first. Height was among the leaders of the movement that led to the greatest breakthroughs in our modern civil rights history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But she wasn't on the speakers' list at the massive gathering on the National Mall to press for the guarantees they provide. She wished she'd had her moment too. But she sat on the platform and listened.

Height didn't seek public recognition for the key role she played in advancing integration, equal opportunities for women, people with disabilities and LGBT workers or in the fights against apartheid in South Africa, tyranny in Haiti and HIV/AIDs here at home. "If you worry about who is going to get credit, you don't get much work done," she once said.

4. Don't give up. When Height graduated from high school, she had a scholarship to Barnard. But when she arrived, she was told she'd have to wait a year because the college had already filled its Negro quota. So she went across town and enrolled at NYU. A sign of the true grit that kept her going from the early 1930's, when she campaigned against lynchings, through the many years of baby-step, stop-and-start progress toward equal opportunity laws to the years beyond when she sought to make the promise in the laws a reality.

Part of what kept her going, I think, was her commitment to public service. "I want to be remembered," she said, "as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom." But there was also faith. When President Obama was elected, she was asked if she ever dreamed it could happen. "If you didn't have the dream," she said, "you couldn't have worked on it."

5. Always wear great hats.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons