We've got to work to save our children and do it with full

In the solemn yet fiery words of Dorothy Height, “We’ve got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it,” we hear not merely a call to action, but a commandment of the heart — an eternal truth spoken by one who had seen generations rise and fall, and who knew that the strength of any nation, any people, lies not in its monuments or armies, but in its children. Her voice, forged in the fires of struggle and compassion, reminds us that the task of nurturing the young cannot be delegated, cannot be postponed, and cannot be taken lightly. It is a sacred duty that binds the living to the future.

The origin of this quote lies in Height’s lifelong crusade for equality, education, and human dignity. As a leader of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, she witnessed firsthand the neglect and suffering that can consume a generation when society turns its gaze away. Her words were not spoken in comfort but in urgency. For she understood that no government, no institution, no benevolent stranger could replace the love, vigilance, and responsibility of a community that chooses to protect its own. When she said, “if we do not, no one else is going to do it,” she was warning us against complacency — against the temptation to assume that progress happens on its own.

To the ancients, the child was seen as the seed of civilization, the vessel through which memory, virtue, and wisdom are reborn. The great philosophers of old — from Confucius to Plato — taught that a society’s true character is revealed in how it educates its youth. Dorothy Height spoke in that same lineage of wisdom. She understood that saving our children meant more than feeding or sheltering them; it meant teaching them courage, justice, and compassion — the inner wealth that sustains them when the outer world grows harsh. A nation that forgets to teach these things, she implied, forgets how to live.

Consider the story of Mary McLeod Bethune, another great educator and reformer, who founded a school for Black girls with little more than a dollar and a dream. Like Height, she believed that saving children was the only way to redeem a future that history had denied. She fought for education not as charity, but as liberation. In her students, she saw not victims but builders of tomorrow, and in every classroom she lit a torch against ignorance. The same spirit burns in Height’s words — the conviction that salvation is not a gift from others, but a work we must undertake ourselves, with reverence and resolve.

Height’s call to “work” also speaks to collective responsibility. It is not enough to hope, or to lament; one must labor. The phrase “with full respect for the fact” reminds us that awareness is itself an act of honor — an acknowledgment that we cannot shift the burden to unseen hands. Too often, society believes that “someone else” will fix what is broken. But the truth, as she knew, is harsher: there is no someone else. The power to heal, to guide, to protect lies within us, and the failure to act is the quiet death of compassion.

There is heroism in such labor. To save our children is to build fortresses not of stone, but of love and understanding. It is to stand as guardians against the tides of neglect, violence, and ignorance that seek to claim the young. It is to fight for schools that teach not only arithmetic, but humanity; to raise voices against injustice; to listen to the cries of the unheard and answer with action. Height’s vision was not one of pity, but of empowerment — she saw in every child the potential for greatness, and in every adult the sacred duty to awaken it.

From this we learn a timeless lesson: that the future is not something we wait for — it is something we shape. Each generation is the gardener of the next. If we do not sow seeds of compassion, curiosity, and courage, the fields of tomorrow will bear only weeds of indifference. Let us then, as Dorothy Height urged, work with respect, urgency, and love, for no one else can fulfill this charge. Let every home become a sanctuary of learning, every community a cradle of care, and every heart a promise to protect the innocent flame that burns within the young. For if we save the children, we save the world; and if we fail them, we forfeit the right to hope.