By: Laila Schwin and Valery Warner
February 8, 2022
Dorothy Height was an activist for both African American civil rights and women’s rights for most of her life. She focused on issues that greatly-affected African American women such as illiteracy, unemployment, voting rights, and awareness, among other things. Height was considered to be the first or one of the first leaders in the civil rights movement to acknowledge and fight against the issues facing women within the movement. Through this, she went on to be the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.
Height was born on March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Virginia. Shortly after she was born, her family moved to Rankin, Pennsylvania, where she began to excel as a student. She attended a racially-integrated school and attended various clubs that began to teach her about the importance of fighting for her rights. Height was a member of the Pittsburgh YWCA and fought against their policy that barred African Americans from their pools. Alongside her mother, she was also a member of the Pennsylvania Federation of Colored Women’s Club.
Upon starting high school, Height became active in anti-lynching campaigns and earned a scholarship for her speeches. She graduated from Rankin High School in 1929.
Shortly after finishing high school in 1929, Height was accepted into Barnard College but was later denied entrance because the college refused to admit more than two black students per year. She then enrolled at New York University and went on to earn her undergraduate degree in 1932 followed by her master’s degree in Educational Psychology by 1933. She continued with her studies for postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work.
Height used her positions of authority in both the YWCA and the NCNW to further her work for integration and women’s rights during the civil rights movement. She eventually became a part of the “Big Six” which was a group of up to nine notable civil rights activists with the main members being Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Height organized Wednesdays in Mississippi with Polly Spiegel Cowan, which brought together women across the country to fight against segregation and for women’s equality. She also developed many international volunteer programs with the NCNW in Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America.
Later in life and joined by 15 women, Height went on to form the organization titled African American Women for Reproductive Freedom. The group formed in 1990 with the purpose of fighting the stigma that African American women face for advocating for their own reproductive health. This stigma affects all women, but they focused on the specific aspects of it that are worse for women of color.
In 1963, Height, along with other civil rights activists, organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. From 1934-1937, Height worked in the New York City Department of Welfare. From there, she became a counselor at the YWCA of New York City, Harlem Branch. She also became President of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in 1958 and remained in that position until 1990. Eventually, in 1989, she went on to receive the Citizens Medal Award from President Ronald Reagan and later the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. In 2004, Height was honored with the Congressional Gold Medal.
On April 20, 2010, Dorothy Height passed away at the age of 98. Her funeral was held at the Washington National Cathedral, and her eulogy was delivered by then president, Barack Obama. She was later buried at Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Colmar Manor, Maryland.
{Information for this article can be found at National Women’s History.}
THE RETURN OF THE EYE 