There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and

The words of Dorothy Height—“There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions.”—resound like a trumpet across the ages. They are words born of struggle, tempered in the fires of injustice, and spoken with the authority of one who marched, organized, and bore witness to the storm of America’s battle for freedom. In them we hear both a warning and a hope: that the guardians of order need not be enemies of liberty, and that true justice is found when law and human dignity walk side by side.

To understand the heart of this teaching, we must return to the days of the Civil Rights Movement. Dorothy Height, often called the “godmother” of the movement, stood alongside giants such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., yet she carried her work with a quiet but unyielding strength. She had seen how those sworn to uphold the law often turned their power against the innocent—children attacked by police dogs, marchers beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, voices of truth silenced with tear gas and prison walls. It is from this crucible that she spoke: to remind the world that law enforcement loses its legitimacy when it forgets human rights.

History offers us the vivid example of the Birmingham campaign of 1963. Peaceful protesters, young and old, filled the streets to demand desegregation and equality. The response was brutal: fire hoses powerful enough to tear bark from trees, unleashed upon the bodies of men, women, and children. The police sought to enforce “order,” but in doing so, they desecrated justice. Dr. King and his companions endured jail and scorn, but their steadfastness revealed the truth Height later voiced—that true law enforcement must defend the people’s rights, not trample them under the pretense of control.

Yet Height’s words also contain a higher vision. She reminds us that there is no contradiction between safety and freedom, between security and justice. The false choice offered by tyrants—that one must surrender liberty for the sake of order—is a deception. For a society that sacrifices civil rights in the name of control soon finds that neither safety nor freedom endures. True peace is not born from fear, but from the assurance that one’s dignity is honored, one’s voice is heard, and one’s rights are secure.

Let us reflect also on Dr. King, whom she invokes. His dream was not of a nation where law enforcement was abolished, but where it was righteous—where police would stand not as enemies of the people, but as guardians of their shared dignity. He stirred the people to march not to cast down the law, but to call the law back to its higher purpose. Dorothy Height warns us, then, that to forget this vision is to betray his legacy, to trade the hard-won gains of the past for new chains in the present.

The lesson is clear: societies thrive only when law and rights are reconciled. A law that denies human dignity is not law but tyranny. And rights without order become fragile, like a house built on sand. Each depends upon the other: law gives structure to freedom, and freedom gives soul to law. To separate them is to doom both.

Therefore, let each citizen take this teaching to heart. When you see injustice clothed in the garments of “law enforcement,” speak against it. When you see chaos threatening peace, remember that true order can be restored without trampling the rights of the weak. Support leaders and policies that embody both justice and compassion. Honor the memory of those who marched, suffered, and bled so that the world might know that the hand of authority can also be the hand of mercy.

Dorothy Height’s voice calls to us still: let there be law, but let it be righteous; let there be order, but let it be just; let there be enforcement, but never at the cost of the human soul. For in this balance lies the strength of nations and the hope of generations yet to come.