Roy Paul - Dorothy Height's power, influence spanned decades lyrics

As I arrived in Washington, D.C., for the funeral of Dr. Dorothy Height, I thought about what motivated me to travel 225 miles to pay tribute, without a ticket or an invitation. At 3:40 a.m., I found my way to the line where tickets would be handed out and in the wee hours of the morning formed a bond with others waiting to pay tribute, despite the chilly air and gusting wind. By 7 a.m., when I was handed ticket No. 6, I'd met a member of Height's sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, and a number of other people who had not met each other before but shared a sense of gratitude and devotion to Dr. Height. Height was one of the most powerful people in America. Her influence on national policy spanned from the 1930s to 2010. She met with every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama, advising President Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Johnson to appoint African-American women to government positions. While the names of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are recognizable all over the world, Height was on the front lines of the civil rights movement and women's liberation movement decades earlier. She first met Martin Luther King Jr. when he was 15 and was trying to decide whether to pursue a career in the ministry, education or law. As a social worker in the 1930s, she helped resolve riots in Harlem and marched to protest lynching. Beyond being president of the National Council of Negro Women, Height was also on the national staff of the YWCA, and national president of Delta Sigma Theta. She established hands-on programs including "Wednesdays in Mississippi," which created opportunities for black and white women from the North and the South to create a dialogue of understanding. No one I met at the funeral had known about Height's remarkable accomplishments, yet every one of us benefited from her lifelong pursuit of social justice and equality. As I looked out across the Washington National Cathedral, capable of holding thousands of people, I could count the people my age on one hand. True, most students would not have been able to leave school to attend, but how many of us realize that we can be powerful without ever being on the talk-show circuit? That point was driven home to me when Obama said in his eulogy, "She never cared about who got the credit. What she cared about was the cause. The cause of justice, the cause of equality, the cause of opportunity, freedom's cause." One benefit of living in the 21st century is that I can still "meet" Height online. In her 2005 Million More March speech, she says, "We may have come to this country in different ships, but we are all in the same boat now." She went on to say that the civil rights movement taught her that "unity" is not "uniformity," but whatever our differences, we learn to get focused. How does Height's pursuit of social justice and equality impact my generation? Besides the obvious privilege of the right to vote, pursuit of higher education and wider opportunities in many fields of endeavor, I am free to choose how I live my life. As I reflect on the day, I'm empowered by Obama's final statement: "Let us honor her life by changing this country for the better as long as we are blessed to live."