KTLA News: "Dorothy Height speaks about efforts to create a memorial to Mary McLeod Bethune" (1972)

we felt that at the end of a century after emancipation at least after the proclamation you and I know that we still are fighting for emancipation uh that there ought to be on the other end of Lincoln Park a memorial recognizing the contribution that black people men and women have made in American life and the most fitting symbol for that was Mary McLoud bethon here was a woman who had been born of Slave parents and yet she Rose to be an advisor to presidents for presidents of the United States the National Council of negro women which was founded in 1935 by Mary McLoud bethon had a major role in trying to help women join hands across many different lines the educated and the non Not educated uh the woman who had opportunity and the woman who was denied it uh all of us somehow as Mrs bethon put it if we were black we were outside of America's mainstream of opportunity influence and power and that's why she had organized the National Council of negro women and when we were looking towards the first century since the Emancipation Proclamation we conceived the idea of erecting in our nation's capital A the first Memorial to a black American this is a very significant thing because Washington DC was laid out by a black man Benjamin Baner and there are memorials and other things that recognize uh contri utions of many different people but not a single one to a black American and we therefore found that in Lincoln Park which is in Washington near the capitol mall that there is a monument of Mr Lincoln with a slave uh with a broken chain at and the slave is at Mr Lincoln's knee that Memorial is called the emanci founded and served as president and founder of a 4-year accredited college she had also organized the National Council of negro women in 1935 and so we took go by June 1st oh I'm confident yes I'm confident I think that um the uh dinner that has been given here tomorrow night is kind of a a fresh start a new beginning a strengthening it's a call to all of the people who believe that the contribution of black people needs to be recognized and I think that people will contribute what are the major hurdles you have to face between now and June 1st one of the hurdles is that it is a hard thing for people to stay by a goal it's much easier to give up when you hit the first uh difficulty and we Face many I can't tell you what we had to go through to get this through the Congress and some of the people who have have been engaged in raising the funds have no way of even understanding how complex it is to do something as a private woman's organization with the federal government and all of the steps that it has taken for us to get the Fine Arts commission to give us not an approval but a unanimous approval um we went through um the same racist attitudes that you find with everything else because when we first started there were some congressman who called us up and said why do you want to have a memorial in Lincoln Park why don't you put a plaque on a fountain up at Howard University and call it in honor of Mrs bethon because they didn't see that Mrs Bethune had already built her own Monument she didn't need us to build one we needed one so that our children and people of the future would recognize that black people have made a contribution in American life and we were using Mrs bethon as a symbol it would have been a disgrace to have put a simple plaque up at Howard University naming Mrs bethon when Mrs bethon already had a four-year College which she had established and I only cite that because that's one of the nicest illustrations of the kind of hurdles we had to overcome because the sentiment had not been established but when you ask me will we make it I say yes because I sense a new realization on the part of black people that they will not be described just as problems