Rights icons remembered

THE civil rights movement lost two of its leading voices in the past week. We all are poorer for their passing.

Benjamin Hooks was laid to rest yesterday in Memphis. The 85-year-old, who died last Thursday, was best known as the longtime executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When he took over the NAACP in 1977, it was deep in debt and its membership had shrunk to just 200,000. When he stepped down in 1992, the venerable organization's membership had grown by several hundred thousand and it was on sound financial footing.

On Tuesday, Dorothy Height, one of the leading women of the civil rights era, died at age 98. A rights activist from her teens, Ms. Height spent her long life fighting for equality for both women and African-Americans. She led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and was an active member of the Young Women's Christian Association for decades.

Mr. Hooks and Ms. Height were in the vanguard of the civil rights movement. Both were colleagues of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. Hooks was a member of Mr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and took part in many sit-ins, protests, and marches. Ms. Height was perhaps the central female figure in the rights movement, sharing the platform when Mr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington in 1963.

In 1965, Mr. Hooks became the first black judge in the South since Reconstruction when he was named to the Tennessee Criminal Court. He also was the first African-American to serve on the Federal Communications Commission, a position he used to push for greater minority participation in media.

As a lawyer, Mr. Hooks fought discrimination in his hometown of Memphis. As a preacher, he fought for equality from the pulpit for decades, at both the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis and the Greater New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2007.

Ms. Height, a recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, continued to be a major voice for civil rights into her 90s.

No list of accomplishments and awards can do justice to the contributions Mr. Hooks and Ms. Height made to the task of securing rights taken for granted by younger generations of African-Americans. Every woman or person of color in the United States who sits on a corporate board, dons the robes of justice, or walks the halls of power in the nation's capital owes them a debt that can never be repaid.

All Americans - male and female, black and white - benefit because Benjamin Hooks, Dorothy Height, and others helped America live up to its promise.