Editorial: She sought justice
Dorothy I. Height was often inaccurately described as a leading lady in the civil rights movement, or some similar gender-specific appellation. In truth, she was as important as any man to the herculean effort to turn this nation away from its long history of racial discrimination and oppression.
Dorothy I. Height was often inaccurately described as a leading lady in the civil rights movement, or some similar gender-specific appellation. In truth, she was as important as any man to the herculean effort to turn this nation away from its long history of racial discrimination and oppression.
Height died Tuesday at age 98. She should be remembered for her tireless work to try to make America live up to the ideal of liberty and justice for all.
For 40 years until 1997, Height ran the National Council of Negro Women, which had been founded in 1935 by her mentor, noted educator Mary McLeod Bethune. That umbrella organization for 34 national and 250 community-based groups had millions of members, which gave Height a powerful platform.
She used it to forge collaborations with other civil rights leaders to push for school desegregation, voting rights, jobs, and equal access to public accommodations.
Height began participating in civil rights protests in the 1930s in Harlem. By the 1960s, she was mapping strategy with the movement's top leaders, including union official A. Philip Randolph; the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Whitney Young, National Urban League; Roy Wilkins, NAACP; John Lewis, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and James Farmer, Congress On Racial Equality.
Those men come to mind more readily when America's civil rights history is discussed. But that conversation is incomplete if it doesn't include Dorothy Height. When others had left the struggle, she was still fighting for equality.
