Remembering Dorothy Height

We remember her not solely for all she did during the civil rights movement. We remember her for all she did over a lifetime, behind the scenes, to broaden the movement's reach, to shine a light on stable families and tight-knit communities, to make us see the drive for civil rights and women's rights not as a separate struggle, but as part of a larger movement to secure the rights of all humanity, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity.
—President Barack Obama, April 29, 2010

Dorothy Height was an individual of epic influence. From early in the post–Harlem Renaissance to the Obama administration, Height's voice was in unison with the cause of equality. Her leadership was unquestionable; for more than four decades she served as president of the National Council of Negro Women, whose membership ran into the millions. She was within an arm's reach of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, and she was there again on October 16, 1995, as a featured speaker during the Million Man March. For championing civil rights over the course of her lifetime, Height received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

President Barak Obama eulogized Height as an individual who never lost sight of the struggle to better the human condition, and one who did not seek glory as she "went about her work quietly, without fanfare, without self-promotion. She never cared about who got the credit. She didn't need to see her picture in the papers.”

Hear Dorothy Height tell her story in her own words. On March 19, 1997, she was interviewed at the National Portrait Gallery and spoke about her childhood in Rankin, Pennsylvania, her beginnings as an activist in Harlem, and her emergence as a civil rights leader. She was interviewed by the Smithsonian’s Marc Pachter.