Remembering Dorothy Height
BET.com remembers civil rights icon Dorothy Height. See photos.
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Passing of an Icon - The nation lost a civil rights icon, April 20, with the death of Dorothy Irene Height. She was 98. Born in 1912 in Richmond, Va. and raised in Pennsylvania, Height was admitted into Barnard College in 1929 but was turned away because the school wouldn't allow more than two Black women. She ended up going to New York University instead and earning a bachelor’s degree in 1932 and a master’s the next year.
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Early Career - In 1937, while working at the Harlem YWCA, she met famed educator Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who came to speak at one of the organization’s meetings. She joined the organization the same year, thus starting her career in the civil rights movement, fighting for equality for both Blacks and women.
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Leadership - In 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA and from 1946 to 1957 she served as the National President of Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority Incorporated. She remained an active member of the sorority throughout her life.
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National Council of Negro Women - In 1957, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women. She held the position for 40 years. "I hope not to work this hard all the rest of my life," she said when she left her post in 1997. "But whether it is the council, whether it is somewhere else, for the rest of my life, I will be working for equality, for justice, to eliminate racism, to build a better life for our families and our children."
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Next to King - Height was just a few feet from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in 1963. “He spoke longer than he was supposed to speak,” Height recalled in an Associated Press interview. But she knew the speech would have lasting effects for generations to come because “it gripped everybody.”
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