NNPA columnist
(NNPA) – If you ever attended a National Council of Negro Women event, you ended up singing “This Little Light of Mine” at the end. It was Dr. Dorothy Irene Height’s favorite song: “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine”.
The civil rights pioneer, Fannie Lou Hamer, also loved to sing “This Little Light of Mine.” The song encompasses humility and empowerment, the recognition that each light is little, but that in choosing to allow it to shine, to amplify, it can be great.
Maya Angelou wrote, “Fannie Lou Hamer knew that she was one woman and only one woman. However, she knew she was an American and as an American she had a light to shine on the darkness of racism. It was a little light, but she aimed it directly at the gloom of ignorance.”
Dorothy Height and Fannie Lou Hamer embraced their light and shone it at our nation’s deficiencies. I recently asked the 80 women who graduated from Bennett College how they might allow their light to shine. What is our passion? How will we transmit it? How will we let our light shine?
In the weeks since Height’s death, I have been thinking of the many ways she let her light shine. She shone light on issues of equal pay, workplace inequities, global issues of gender inequity and health disparities.
And by her very presence she tackled racism, sexism, classism and ageism, refusing to be marginalized because she was nearly 100 years old. She didn’t elbow her way to the table, but in her dignity she insisted on space. By just coming to work every day, well after the retirement age of 65, she shone her light on the capabilities of older Americans.
This is a challenging time to claim light. The unemployment rate, at 9.9 percent, is up from last month. The African-American unemployment rate is much higher, and a young person entering today’s job market will face nothing but challenges. Too many of our students step away from graduation with uncertain plans. They are waiting to hear about internships, jobs and graduate school possibilities. They are shackled by an economy that has fewer jobs available today than it did in 2003.
And yet, they have this little light, this small thing that ignites them. For that, they cannot allow circumstances diminish that light, steal their joy and dampen their enthusiasm. The same tenacity and persistence that propelled them through graduation exercises must now also propel them into the next chapter of their lives.
Tens of thousands of African-American young adults will graduate during this season, tens of thousands of lights that need to shine. Those of us who are seasoned, who are elders, need to ask what we can do to ignite the light.
Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C.