Dorothy Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up in Rankin, Pennsylvania. Growing up, she attended, with her mother, the meetings of the Pennsylvania Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. There, she became aware of the importance of “sisterhood” and civil rights issues, and during high school, she led numerous anti-lynching campaigns. She was a talented orator, and after winning a national oratory competition, she got a college scholarship. She got accepted to Barnard College, but before the school year started, they canceled her admission because it had reached its black students’ unofficial quota. She went on to study at New York University, graduating in 1933 with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in educational psychology.
After college, Height worked for several years as a social worker in the New York City Department of Welfare. In 1937, at the age of 25, she began to work as a counselor at the Harlem branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), climbing the ladder to become a prominent leader at the national level of the YWCA.
After a meeting with Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), Height began to volunteer at the NCNW. Throughout most of her life, she worked for both the YWCA and the NCNW, promoting civil rights and women’s rights.
In 1944, at 32, she headed the national YWCA’s program of Interracial Relations, and two years later, she directed the integration of all the organization’s centers. In this role, she ran workshops, organized meetings, and wrote pamphlets to help white YWCA members and employees to overcome their fears and prejudices.
Through the NCNW, Height worked on ending the lynching of black people and restructuring the criminal justice system. In 1957, at 45, she was nominated the president of NCNW, serving in this position for 40 years. Under her leadership, the NCNW supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s, creating scholarship programs for civil rights workers, organizing voter registration in the South, and giving financial aid to civil rights activists. Height became one of the leading figures of the civil rights movement, regularly advising politicians, such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Dwight D. Eisenhower. She was one of the organizers of the March on Washington. Alongside Polly Spiegel Cowan, she established Wednesdays in Mississippi, a recurrent gathering of black and white women from the North and South working together against segregation.
Height seized the movement’s momentum to push harder to integrate the YWCA. She created a nationwide program for the desegregation of the YWCA communities and established its Center for Racial Justice in 1965, serving as its director.
At 65, she retired from the YWCA, focusing all of her efforts on running the NCNW for 20 more years. She founded a vocational training program to assist women in opening businesses and initiated activities to strengthen Black families, such as the Black Family Reunion, an annual celebration of black traditions and values. Throughout the 1990s, she connected young people to the organization to encourage literacy employment and avoid drug abuse.
She retired from the NCNW in 1996, not before securing the funding for a national headquarters in the historic Sears House in Washington, DC, that later was renamed in her honor. Even in her last decade, Height continued to work for human rights, serving as the chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights until she died at the age of 98.
This post is also available in:
Español
This post is also available in:
Español
