Change Delivered by Hooks and Height

The fabric of the original civil rights movement frayed further when Doctors Benjamin Hooks and Dorothy Height recently passed. Both tireless warriors played pivotal roles in righting America’s historical wrongs and to them we owe thanks for freedoms that some of us take for granted.

Education equality, of course, was one of the movement’s strongest threads. Ironically, the nation’s second African-American female college graduate to be recorded was Dr. Hooks’ grandmother. Augmenting his long-term NAACP chairman post, the pastor in retirement was also the first black appointed to a FCC board seat. Hooks was laid to rest last week.

President Barack Obama will eulogize civil rights royalty when the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal winner’s funeral is held at Washington National Cemetery today. According to a WSJ report last week, Dr. Height attended New York University after Barnard College refused to admit her because they’d reach their quota of two.

And despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954’s dismantling separate but unequal, something is still amiss some 56 years later. Had 2010 been the heyday of Hooks and Height, I guarantee the holler about a return to school segregation wouldn’t be faint.

See this brother's take: http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/90849294.html.