This morning we are sad to announce yet eager to honor the life, servitude and influence of one of our country’s most beloved jewels.
News spread just before the sun would rise this morning that Lady Dorothy Height, who as longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women was the leading female voice of the 1960s civil rights movement, died Tuesday. She was 98.
Height, who continued actively speaking out into her 90s, had been at Howard University Hospital for some time.
As a teenager, Height could be found marching in New York’s Times Square shouting, “Stop the lynching.” In the 1950s and 1960s, she stepped up as the leading woman helping the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other well-known activists orchestrate the civil rights movement.
Height was born in Richmond, Va., and the family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was four. She later earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from New York University and continued her postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work. Height faced and overcame many obstacles including being turned away by Barnard College because it already had its quota of two black women students enrolled at the time.
In 1937, while she was working at the Harlem YWCA, Height met famed educator Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had come to speak at a meeting of Bethune’s organization. Height eventually rose to leadership roles in both the council and the YWCA.
For more on the story as we continue honor the legacy of one of our very own, please visit BlackAmericaWeb.com. Post your thoughts and comments on how you will celebrate the memory of Dorothy Height today, tomorrow and forevermore. What does this loss mean for the next generation in your opinion?
