“The Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement”

When you think of all the important women in Black History, who comes to mind?

Rosa Parks?

Harriet Tubman?

Halle Berry?

How about Dorothy Height?

Do you know who she is?

“The Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement,” is how President Obama once described her.

She stood side by side with Martin Luther King and all the other civil rights leaders of the 20th Century – at a time when being both African-American and a woman put her at a double disadvantage.

But she refused to be anything less than an equal partner in the fight for equality – not just for African-Americans but for women as well.

And in her determined and dignified way, she continued to fight until the end of her life.

“This is my life’s work,” she told the Associated Press in 1997.  “It is not a job.”

Dorothy Height would have turned 100 years old this year.

Her story began on March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Virginia – a city that was the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

When Dorothy was 4, the Height family moved to an integrated community in the north – Rankin, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.

Dorothy made many friendships that crossed the color line.

But she also learned her first lessons about discrimination.

In her autobiography, “Open Wide the Freedom Gates,” Height writes about not being allowed into a YWCA pool when she was 12.

She demanded to talk to the center’s director, to ask him why.

He explained that “girls of color” were not welcome.

For Dorothy Height, that was the beginning of a lifelong battle for equal rights.

Dorothy went on to attend Rankin High School, which was nearly all white.

In her autobiography, she says a new principal arrived at the school in 1928 – a principal who decided a black girl should not lead the singing at school assemblies, which Height usually did.

At the first assembly after the principal’s decision, she remembers the pianist beginning to play the school song – and the students, her classmates, refusing to sing.

Again, the pianist began playing.

But the students were silent.

Finally, after yet another attempt to get the students to sing, the principal gave in.

He allowed Dorothy to come up to the stage.

At that point, she says, her classmates erupted in song.

“It was a very strange experience, almost as if it had been organized,” she later wrote.

But it was yet another example of how Dorothy Height, even as a teenager, transcended the boundaries of race and became a leader of all people.

Dorothy wasn’t just a song-leader in high school.

She was an outstanding student.

And she won a $1,000 scholarship in a national oratorical contest sponsored by a group called the Elks.

She was such a good student that she was admitted to the prestigious Barnard University in New York City.

But when she arrived at the school, she was told she would not be admitted after all.

It seemed the school didn’t realize she was black.

And its quota of black students had already been filled.

(NOTE:  At that time, colleges and universities strictly limited the number of black students they would let in.  That’s what’s known as a quota.)

Still, young Ms. Height was determined to get a college education.

She went on to graduate from New York University, where she got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in just four years.

She also did post-graduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work.

In 1933, Height became a leader of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America.

It was through that organization that she began her work in the civil-rights movement.

She organized protests against “lynchings” — incidents in which black people were hanged from trees by white racists.

She also worked to desegregate the armed forces.

And she worked to reform the criminal-justice system to make it fairer to all kinds of people.

In 1938, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invited Height to help plan a World Youth Conference.

“I got to know her,” Height later told journalist Gwen Ifill.  “And she followed me and helped me all the rest of her life.”

Height remained heavily involved with the YWCA for four decades.

She served on its national board from 1944 until 1977.

From 1947 until 1956, Height also served as national president of Delta Sigma Theta.

That’s a black women’s sorority.

But the organization she served the longest was the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW).

In the late 1930s, Height was personally recruited by another civil-rights pioneer, NCNW founder Mary McLeod Bethune.

With the NCNW, Height helped organize voter-registration drives, day-care and school-breakfast programs, and job fairs.

She even organized what she called “pig banks,” which provided livestock to poor African-American farmers.

She worked not only in the United States, but also in Africa, Asia and Europe.

In 1957, Height became the NCNW’s president — a position she held for 40 years.

And in 1963, she helped plan the historic March on Washington — the march where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Height was disappointed that no woman was chosen to speak at the march.

“It was hard for (the men) to realize … the importance of women’s rights,” she later said.  “I think that we were so absorbed in the racial situation and racism.”

But, she also said, “We worked through that.  And we supported the march, as everyone had to do, because it was a tremendous moment in American life.”

After the march, Height responded by organizing something called “Wednesdays in Mississippi” — a program that brought black and white women together to find common ground across racial lines.

It was one of many times in which Dorothy Height made sure she and other women had a place at the table, as the saying goes.

“I think I was born a feminist,” Height later told Ifill.  “Because I think all my life I’ve been proud to be a girl and to be a woman.”

At the age of 74, Height founded an event called the Black Family Reunion.

She said she did it in response to what she felt was negative publicity about African-American families.

The Black Family Reunion has since become an annual celebration in Washington, D.C.

It’s designed to teach people about the important role the family has played throughout African-American history.

In 1993, Dorothy Height was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

In 1994, President Clinton presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the nation’s highest civilian honor.

And in 2004, she received the Congressional Gold Medal — the highest honor a US civilian can receive from Congress.

In 2008, when Barack Obama became the first African-American ever elected President of the United States, Dorothy Height told a Washington, D.C., TV station that she was overwhelmed with emotion.

“People ask me, did I ever dream it would happen,” Height said.  “I said, ‘If you didn’t have the dream, you couldn’t have worked on it.’”

Dorothy Height passed away on April 20, 2010 in Washington, D.C.

She was 98 years old.

“We remember her for all she did over a lifetime,” President Obama said at her funeral.  “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.

“Let us honor her life,” he continued, “by changing this country for the better, as long as we are blessed to live.”