Rest In Peace, You've Earned It

She wasn't really a household name. She wasn't Rosa, or Martin, or Bayard, or Malcolm, but she was important. And now she's gone.

Dorothy Height, a leader in both the African-American and the women’s rights movements, died on Tuesday at the age of 98.

During her lifetime, Dorothy saw much, and stood up for, and fought against, many things. At the time of her death, she was president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, an organization she led for forty years.

• In 1929, she was accepted to Barnard College. Shortly before classes began, however, she was called into the dean's office and told she couldn't enroll at Barnard because they'd already met their quota for Negro students. Dorothy Height took her Barnard acceptance letter to New York University where she was admitted at once, and earned a bachelor’s degree in education and a master's in psychology.
• In the 1930s, Dorthy Height stood up against lynchings, when most people, and nearly all women, were afraid to speak.
• In the late 30s, Dorothy Height called attention to the exploitation of black women working as domestic day laborers; these women stood on street corners, known locally as "slave markets", in Brooklyn and the Bronx, where they were picked up and hired for 15 cents an hour by white suburban housewives who cruised the corners in their cars.
• In the 1940s, as the executive leader of the YWCA, she helped to integrate their facilities nationwide.
• In the 40s and 50s Dorothy Height was president of Delta Sigma Theta, an international sorority of black women.
• In 1963, Dorothy Height sat on the platform with Martin Luther King when he delivered his "I Have a Dream” speech. Though she was one of the organizers of the march, Dorothy Height was not invited to speak; only men spoke that day.
• In the mid-60s, she helped institute “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” a program that flew interracial teams of Northern women to the state to meet with black and white women there.
• In the 1970s, along with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and others, Dorothy Height helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus.
• In the 1980s, Dorothy Height created “Black Family Reunions,” which were sponsored by the National Council of Negro Women. These reunions were held in cities across the United States; hundreds of thousands attended the first one, in Washington in 1986.
• In 1994, Dorothy Height was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton.
• In 2004, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal President George W. Bush.
• In 2009, she was awarded a place of honor at president Obama's inauguration. Upon her passing, the president said: “the godmother of the civil rights movement and a hero to so many Americans.”

Dorothy Height did so much, and oftentimes worked twice as hard. See, she was what you might call doubly-impaired: female and black. Many women's groups did not seek out her advice or council because of her race, and African-American organizations didn't use her because of her gender.

But that didn't stop Dorothy Height.

And she wasn't concerned about being overshadowed by men during the Civil Rights movement; she wanted progress not the limelight, saying, “I was there, and I felt at home in the group. But I didn’t feel I should elbow myself to the front when the press focused on the male leaders."

During her life Dorothy Height received nearly forty honorary doctorates, from institutions including Tuskegee, Harvard and Princeton, but there was one honor, the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree, that meant more than all the others combined. In 2004, 75 years after turning her away, Barnard College designated Dorothy Height an honorary graduate.

Rest in peace, Dorothy.