Forty Years Without Growing Weary

In 1957, Dorothy Height stepped into the presidency of the National Council of Negro Women in Washington, D.C., inheriting an organization founded by Mary McLeod Bethune just two decades earlier. She was forty-five years old. She would not step down for forty years.

During those four decades, Height stood on the platform at the 1963 March on Washington — one of the only women there — while the nation's attention fixed on the men at the microphone. She organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi" in 1964, quietly sending interracial teams of women into the most dangerous counties in America to build bridges no headline would ever cover. Year after year, she showed up. Administration after administration, she advocated. When the cameras left, she remained.

Height did not receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom until 1994 — thirty-seven years into her work. The Congressional Gold Medal came in 2004, nearly half a century after she began. The recognition arrived, but it arrived late, long after lesser souls would have quit.

Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Dorothy Height's life is that verse made flesh. Faithfulness is not a single heroic act. It is showing up on the Tuesday after the march, and the Tuesday after that, for forty years. The harvest comes — but only to those who refuse to leave the field.