For Height, seeing six African American women among the group of seven congressional representatives was the validation of a life long struggle against racism and sexism in the US; the conference's topic, global racism, represented the fruits of the struggle that she began with Eleanor Roosevelt when they sat down to help draft the UN convention on human rights.

"Dr. Dorothy Height, one of the most venerable and respectable civil rights leaders in the US has had an extraordinarily important note of historical significance to the conference by her attendance," said Wade Henderson, Executive Director Leadership Conference on civil rights. "So her participation in this conference adds an important note of continuity, a link to the great early foundations of the civil and human rights movement."

The delegation, chaired by Eddie Bernice Johnson a Democrat from Texas and Senior Black Caucus representative John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan, was here to support the fight against racism and to publicly admonish the Bush administration for their lack of participation in the conference.

"The Congressional Black Caucus is exasperated with the stance of the administration and contempt implied by its lack of commitment to the UN World Conference Against Racism. We believe that there is no legitimate way to pretend that racism was not, and is not, real."

The issues and sentiments expressed today were of no surprise to the audience or to black Americans. They were of particular interest to Height, who has been instrumental in shaping the policies and ideas of many of these representatives.

"I have been involved in civil rights all of my life," said Height. "But I first became involved when I joined the National Council of Negro Women that were working on improving conditions for women, and then after that I began working with the youth groups to stop lynching, working against the chain gangs, segregation."

Height nodded her head, covered by a cheerful purple hat, from time to time in agreement with some of the arguments being put forth by the panel on Sunday. She is 89, but she is as sharp as ever on the issues. The topic that dominated the morning is that of compensation for slavery.

"For too long we have kept it quiet and we haven't recognized the damage that slavery did not only to black people but to white people as well," said Height. "It is no accident that while in country the majority of the poor may be white, the majority of those that are poor are of color. We now need to see how we can make some recognition of the contribution that we have made in making the country so great. We have been the backbone of so much of the building of the country and we have received the least."

Sheila Jackson Lee, Democratic Representative from Texas demanded that HR40, the congressional bill, introduced by Conyers in 1989, on slavery reparations be considered seriously. "This conference will fail... if condemnation of slavery and the necessity to begin reparations talks are not addressed," said Lee.

The subject would be investigated further at a proposed conference looking at the fruits of WCAR in the United States. "We are calling for a national debriefing of the conference itself," said Conyers. "We need time to go over the thousands of statements and information that will be the work of this conference."

Height, who is also the chairwoman of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, agreed. "There is no question that there was change, that there was progress, to get the laws, that was major change. To get the Supreme Court decisions has been a major change, so there is no question that we have changed. Now we have to enforce the laws, and really make the laws work, I think that that's the toughest challenge. And also we have to acknowledge that racism still exists, or we'll never be able to eliminate it," she said. "A follow-up conference is important not only the US but every country needs to have it's own conference and look at racism and sexism. Because in a world where the majority of people are women unless you also look at sexism, you do not make much change."