Civil Rights Feminist Dorothy Height Dies at 98

by Whitney Teal · 2010-04-21 07:00:00 UTC
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Dorothy Height, black women's rights activist and president emerita of the National Council for Negro Women (NCNW), passed away today at the age of 98. She's known for her indelible mark on the continuing Civil Rights movement, where she represented many black women as the only woman in the company of leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.

Washington, D.C.'s NPR affiliate, WAMU, spoke with the city's Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton about Height, who she called her inspiration. Underscoring the leader's influence, Norton said "you can't have grown up in the Civil Rights movement as I did and not be influenced by Dorothy Height."

"Her influence was outsized in no small part because she was the only woman and insisted upon her right to be in the group [of Civil Rights leaders]," Norton continued. "She had to always press her own equality with even that group of people."

Like her male counterparts, Height was on the stage at the 1963 March on Washington where King delivered his famous "I Have A Dream Speech." But unlike the men of the movement, Height did not give a speech, something that is telling about the position of women within that movement.

The tireless leader would continue her focused effort to lead and support black women. She joined NCNW, an organization founded by Mary McCloud Bethune in 1935, at the age of 25, and continued her advocacy as an employee of the YWCA and president of Delta Sigma Theta, a sorority for black women. As president of NCNW she helped the organization expand it's role in the community and organized the Black Family Reunion Celebration, which will commemorate its 25th anniversary this September.

Height seemed to be someone who believed that it was of equal importance to reach out to both presidents (she consulted with Eisenhower and Johnson) and college women alike. NCNW operates 240 sections, many of which are on college campuses. I was introduced to the legacy of Height as a member of Howard University's NCNW section and had the pleasure of seeing her speak at the organization's headquarters last spring.

She was, as Norton eulogized, a woman of "particular elegance and grace and fight, and that fight was with her to the very end. She does leave a void ... everyone is going to have to try to do what they can to fill, as a group, fill the leadership that one single woman filled for both the civil rights movement and the women's rights movement."

Photo credit: Speaker Pelosi

Whitney Teal Whitney is a freelance writer based in the suburbs of Washington, D.C and is a frequent contributor to a variety of national and regional publications and websites. She regularly writes about women's rights.
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