Apr. 20 2010 - 10:55 am | 209 views | 0 recommendations | 7 comments

Dorothy Height, Equal Pay Day, and activism’s next generation

By SARA LIBBY

Civil rights icon Dorothy Height. Photo courtesy of racematters.org

It’s eerily fortuitous that Dorothy Height, a pioneer of the civil rights movement and a champion of women’s rights, died on what we now celebrate as Equal Pay Day.

She got involved with the civil rights movement as just a teenager, and went on to serve as president of the National Council for Negro Women, a post she held for over 40 years, during which time she “helped advance landmark legislation on school desegregation, voting rights and equality in the workplace” and advised presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton, according to PBS Newshour.

She was also a quiet presence for some of the biggest moments on the road toward equality: Not only was she the only woman present on the speaker’s platform as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech, but as Justice Department Civil Rights chief Thomas Perez pointed out this morning, Height was standing with JFK when he signed 1963’s Equal Pay Act.

That Barack Obama made the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act the first piece of legislation he signed as president shows how much work is yet to be done; but it also exemplifies how worse off we’d be had women like Dorothy Height not blazed a trail and help instill a sense of urgency among those fighting for each advancement.

Height told Gwen Ifill back in 2003:

I’m always an optimist because I have an abiding faith. And I believe that somehow or other the right will prevail and we have to keep working, I think justice is not an impossibility. I think we can achieve it …But every battle seems to have to be hard fought and hard and we have to work at it. And that’s why I think that we worked with the faith that we can bring about change.

This quote reminded me of a recent Newsweek article on the pro-choice movement that’s been making the rounds, suggesting that young people don’t care about protecting abortion rights because the procedure has been illegal throughout our lives. But it’s precisely because we see these rights as a given, and the right to be treated equally, paid equally, etc. no matter our sex or skin color – rights that Height and countless others worked their entire lives for – that losing them would be appalling.

Institutions like Newsweek can go on calling Gen Y apathetic and lazy; but I’m confident that enough of us care deeply and passionately about equal rights that we can take up the mantle from giants like Dorothy Height.