Calendar of Events

Happy 98th Birthday Dr. Dorothy I. Height
(Continued from page 1)

A crusader for equal rights, Dr. Height has been a presence on the national and international scene for decades. Typically, the lone woman in the midst of the more celebrated male leaders of the civil rights movement, she never let that get in the way of advancing the agenda for civil and equal rights. The Washington Bar Association awarded Dr. Height the Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit at our 2007 Law Day Banquet. Although she is not a lawyer, like all of the other recipients of the award throughout the years, she is an exemplar of the principles we have come to refer to as Houstonian Jurisprudence.

I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Height for just over two decades, both as an outside counsel to NCNW and as her personal attorney on other matters. I was saddened when she was hospitalized in serious condition at Howard University Hospital just before her birthday last month. Even as I prepare this column, her medical condition remains serious.  But, the premature reports in some media outlets, blogs and on a few social networking sites about her demise are, as the writer Mark Twain once said about reports of his death, “greatly exaggerated.”  As the leader of the only African-American organization that owns a building midway between the White House and the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue (America’s main street), neither she, nor NCNW, is likely to fade out of the heart or minds of people for generations to come. At the dedication program for the NCNW/Dorothy I. Height Building, she remarked that “they cannot even inaugurate a president without passing by our house.”  When the last president was inaugurated in 2009, he did pass by their “house.” She is still rejoicing about that particular event, a path that she had helped to pave through her many efforts and advocacy for equal rights. Fight on Dr. Height! We are all hoping and praying for your recovery.

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