Dorothy Height

Social worker and activist

• Born: March 24, 1912
• Birthplace: Richmond, Virginia
• Died: April 20, 2010
• Place of death: Washington, D. C.

Height was an activist for women’s rights and civil rights. She is best known as president and chair of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), founded by her mentor, Mary McLeod Bethune. Height was a resilient and courageous leader who fought to achieve justice and equality for women and people of color for nearly a half-century.

Early Life

Dorothy Irene Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 24, 1912, to James and Fannie Height. When Height was four years old, her family joined the Great Migration of southern African Americans to the North in search of job opportunities. The family settled in Rankin, Pennsylvania, a steel mill town outside Pittsburgh with a large Italian American and German American population. Height’s mother was an active member of the Pennsylvania Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, and Height accompanied her to each meeting. Seeing her mother’s involvement in a movement for African American women influenced Height to become a social activist.

In 1929, Height graduated from Rankin High School at the start of the Great Depression. She entered an oratory contest sponsored by the Independent Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World and won at both the local and national levels, earning a four-year scholarship to attend the school of her choice.

Height chose to study at Barnard College and was accepted for fall admission. After being accepted, however, she was asked to defer her enrollment because Barnard had already accepted two black students for the coming school year. Devastated, Height applied to New York University (NYU) and was immediately accepted. She graduated from NYU in 1932 with dual degrees in psychology and social work. The next year, she completed a master’s degree in educational psychology.

In 1933, Height landed her first salaried job at Brownsville Community Center, which was run by the Brooklyn Church and Mission Federation. At the community center, she worked with young women. She also taught intermediate Sunday school teachers and church administrators through an extension program at Columbia University. She soon accepted a higher paying position at the Home Relief Bureau of New York. As a caseworker for unemployment affairs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Height learned about the welfare system and the unemployment council. In 1935, she became a special investigator in the city’s Welfare Administration under the leadership of New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Life’s Work

In 1937, Height resigned from her position at the Home Relief Bureau and became president of the New York State Christian Youth Council and chair of the Harlem Youth Council. She also served in A. Philip Randolph’s National Negro Congress, an organization focused on the economic concerns of African Americans. As a young leader in these movements, Height focused on combating racial violence, a major concern for African American organizations. Height organized the United Youth Committee Against Lynching with Juanita Jackson of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Together, the two women led a protest in New York’s Times Square.

From 1939 until 1944, Height worked at the Phillis Wheatley branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). While at the YWCA, she volunteered with the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), founded by Mary McLeod Bethune in 1935. She also served as national president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority from 1946 to 1957. At the NCNW, Height assisted Bethune in developing campaigns to desegregate education, fund public housing, and strengthen child labor laws. In 1958, Height succeeded Bethune as president of NCNW. She held the post until 1998, then served as president emerita until her death. A key figure of the Civil Rights movement, Height spearheaded many civil rights and women’s rights campaigns with the NCNW. In 1961, she worked closely with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on President John F. Kennedy’s President’s Commission on the Status of Women. In 1963, Height stood on the platform as Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington.

Height continued her activism throughout her life. President Bill Clinton awarded Height the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. In 2003, Height published her autobiography, Open Wide the Freedom Gates. The next year, she received a Congressional Gold Medal. On April 20, 2010, Height died of natural causes in Washington, D.C.

Significance

In Open Wide the Freedom Gates, Height recounts her fondest memories from her journey through the Civil Rights movement. One notable event illustrates the changes she helped effect: In 1980, Height received the Barnard Medal of Distinction from Barnard College, the school that had denied her admission decades earlier because of racial discrimination.

Bibliography

Height, Dorothy. Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir. New York: Public Affairs, 2003. Chronicles Height’s life from age four until her early nineties, emphasizing her activism.

Houck, David W., and David E. Dixon. “Dorothy Height.” In Women and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Includes a brief biography and the text of a speech Height gave in 1963 in Selma, Alabama. The book’s introduction also offers valuable contextual information about sexism and women’s roles in the Civil Rights movement.

White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. A section on the NCNW includes a biography of Height and useful information about her tenure as its president, her relationship with Bethune, and her unwillingness to marry and subjugate her interests and beliefs to her husband’s.