DOROTHY HEIGHT
Dorothy I. Height, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades, died April 20th in Washington, DC.
Ms. Height was among the coalition of African American leaders who pushed civil rights to the center of the American political stage after World War II, and was a key figure in the struggles for school desegregation, voting rights, employment opportunities and public accommodations in the 1950s and 1960s. She was also president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. The 4 million-member advocacy group consists of 34 national and 250 community-based organizations and was founded in 1935 by educator Mary McLeod Bethune, who was one of Ms. Height’s mentors. Although Ms. Height was arguably the most influential woman at the top levels of civil rights leadership, she never drew the major media attention that conferred celebrity and instant recognition on some of the other civil rights leaders of her time. She was 98.
BENJAMIN HOOKS
Benjamin L. Hooks, the lawyer and Baptist minister who led lunch counter sit-in demonstrations during the 1960s and was the longtime head of the NAACP as it struggled to find its way in the post-civil rights era, died April 15th at his home in Memphis.
In a career spanning six decades, Rev. Hooks achieved many milestones, which included becoming the first black judge to sit on the bench of a Tennessee state court since Reconstruction in 1965. And in 1972, he became the first black member of the Federal Communications Commission, where he championed minority ownership of television and radio stations.
The Tennessee-born Rev. Hooks liked to call himself a “poor little ol’ country preacher” but was considered an extremely charismatic orator with a gift for evoking the daily humiliations of life under segregation. “I wish I could tell you every time I was on the highway and couldn’t use a restroom,” he said. “My bladder is messed up because of that. Stomach is messed up from eating cold sandwiches. So I can’t tell you how I feel about the question, ‘Has integration worked?’ All these intellectual superegoists sit around trying to pinpoint where it hasn’t. But I have to begin at the fundamental issue that I can drive from Houston to my home in Memphis and stop for a hamburger.” He was 85.
And quite the "Lady" she was:) Indeed, the lives of these 2 Honorable individuals (their life-long dedication, their tireless efforts, Sacrifices and achievements) are to be Celebrated! May they Rest In Peace.