Dr. Dorothy Irene Height
The Civil Rights Movement lost its founding matriarch early Tuesday morning. Dorothy I. Height, who fought for most of her life on behalf of women and blacks, died at the age of 98.
Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women for more than 40 years, advising presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama on both civil and gender rights. She helped advance landmark legislation on school desegregation, voting rights and equality in the workplace.
Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1912, Height first joined the civil rights movement as a teenager, marching in New York’s Times Square against lynching. In the 1950s and 1960s she helped bring the movement to the national forefront. In 1963, she was the only woman on the speaker’s platform when King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.
Height was more than all of this, however, she was a fierce advocate for the rights of black women, and for equal pay, access, and opportunity for all. She was a true pioneer at a time when black women had no rights and no access. May God bless this soldier and she now belongs to the ages.