Dr. Dorothy Height

Dr. Dorothy Irene Height - March 24, 1912 – April 20, 2010

Dorothy Height, civil rights activist, died Tuesday at the age of 98. Height had been staying at Howard University Hospital for some time. Height had been a longtime activitist for equality and civil rights. She rallied, marched and supported several icons including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1957, Height became the President of the National Council of Negro Women and held that position until 1997. In 1994, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton.

The late activist C. DeLores Tucker once called Height an icon to all African-American women. “I call Rosa Parks the mother of the civil rights movement,” Tucker said in 1997. “Dorothy Height is the queen.”

In a statement, Obama called her "the godmother of the civil rights movement" and a hero to Americans. "Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality ... and served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement — witnessing every march and milestone along the way," Obama said. Vice President Joe Biden said Height was one of the first people to visit him when he first took his seat in the Senate in 1973. "She remained a friend and would never hesitate to tell me or anybody else when she thought we weren't fighting hard enough," he said.

The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and other awards, she was accorded a place of honor on the dais on Jan. 20, 2009, when Barack Obama took the oath of office as the nation’s 44th president. Ms. Height was the author of a memoir, “Open Wide the Freedom Gates” (Public Affairs, 2003), with a foreword by Maya Angelou. The New York Times Book Review called the book “a poignant short course in a century of African-American history.”

Ms. Height was born in Richmond, Va. The family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was 4. In her memoir, she recalled marching as a teenager in Times Square in an anti-lynching rally. She went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees from New York University and did postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work.

Ms. Height, who never married, was a longtime resident of Washington. She is survived by a sister, Anthanette Aldridge of New York City.