* WARNING: THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL, INTRODUCTORY COPY OF THE BILL.
THE OFFICIAL COPY CONSIDERED BY THE CITY COUNCIL IS THE FIRST READER COPY.
INTRODUCTORY*
CITY OF BALTIMORE
COUNCIL BILL R
(Resolution)
Introduced by: Councilmember Conaway
A RESOLUTION ENTITLED
A COUNCIL RESOLUTION concerning
title
In Memory of Dr. Dorothy Height - 3/24/1912 - 4/20/2010 "Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement"
FOR the purpose of celebrating the life of Dr. Dorothy Height, leading female voice of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement and longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women, who died at the age of 98 after an 80-year campaign for social justice, gender equality, and human rights.
body
Recitals
On Tuesday, August 20, 2010, the National Council of Negro Women, of which she was the president emerita, announced the passing of Dr. Dorothy Height, at the age of 98. In a statement expressing sadness on her passing, the President of the United States recognized Dr. Height as "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans" and, in a proclamation on April 26, ordered flags across the nation, embassies, legations, consular offices and facilities abroad to be flown at half-staff on the day of her interment.
Dr. Heights' New York Times obituary states that she is widely credited as the first person in the modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and the equality for African-Americans as a seamless whole, merging concerns that had historically been largely separate. "That the American social landscape looks as it does today owes in no small part to Ms. Height. Originally trained as a social worker, she was president of the National Council of Negro Women for four decades, from 1957 to 1997, overseeing a range of programs on issues like voting rights, poverty and, in later years, AIDS."
In news coverage of the Civil Rights Movement over the years, much was made of Dr. King and the other so-called "Big Six" men in the forefront of the movement, while, as the only woman who worked regularly alongside them on projects of national significance, Dr. Height was very much the unheralded seventh, despite having begun her activism much earlier as a teenager marching in New York's Time Square shouting, "Stop the lynching".
In 1963, Dr. Height, by then President, National Council of Negro Women, sat on the platform at Dr. King's side as he delivered his historical "I Have a Dream" speech. Although she was one of the march's chief organizers and a prizewinning orator herself, she was not asked to speak, though many black leaders, all men, addressed the crowd that day - highlighting the double stigmatization she confronted throughout her long life - pushed to the margins of women's groups because of her race and to the margins of black groups because of her sex.
Dr Dorothy Height who received, among many others, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Award, Congressional Black Caucus - Decades of Service, President Ronald Reagan Citizens Medal, Franklin Roosevelt Freedom Medal, President Bill Clinton Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal presented by President George W. Bush on her 92nd birthday, as well as 36 Honorary Doctorate Degrees from prestigious universities and colleges, was on January 20, 2009 awarded a well-deserved place of honor on the dias when the first Black American took the oath of office as the nation's 44th president.
A poem quoted in the forward to the memoir she authored in 2003, "Open Wide the Freedom Gates", aptly speaks to Dr. Height's life and legacy:
"I am a black woman tall as a cypress strong beyond all definition still defying place and time and circumstance assailed impervious indestructible Look on me and be renewed."
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, That this Body celebrates the life and mourns the passing of Dr. Dorothy Height, leading female voice of the 1060's Civil Rights Movement and longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women, who died at the age of 98 after an 80-year campaign for social justice, gender equality, and human rights.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution be sent to the Mayor; the President, NAACP; the President, National Council of Negro Women; and the Mayor's Legislative Liaison to the City Council.
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