License to Thrive

"She Reached Amazing Heights"

Dorothy Height, a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements has died at the age of 98.  Known for for mostly un-sung contributions to the Civil Rights movement, she also helped bring attention and advocacy to issues including voting rights, poverty and in later years AIDS. 

Dr.Height is widely credited as the first person in the modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African-Americans as one over-arching issue as opposed to two separate ones.  A longtime executive of the Y.W.C.A., she presided over the integration of its facilities nationwide in the 1940s.

Dr. Height was the president of the Council of Negro Women from 1957 - 1997 and her tenure included  critical years within the Civil Rights movement.  She instituted a variety of social programs in the Deep South, including the pig bank, in which poor black families were given a pig. In the 1960s, 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. Dr. Height also advised numerous American presidents on the issue of civil rights and was one of the founders of the the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. 

Dr. Height was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal awarded by President George W. Bush in 2004.  The two medals are the country's highest civilian awards.  Dr. Height was also honored with a position on the dais when President Obama took the oath of office at the nation's 44th president.