Dorothy I. Height: 1912 – 2010

It always seemed that Dorothy Irene Height, who died today at 98, was present at the creation of black Americans’ twentieth-century struggle for freedom and equality. That was because within the living memory of most Americans Dr. Height was in fact at the center of that multi-faceted struggle that began with the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League a century ago and continues today. It has always seemed that she was a participant in the critical planning sessions, and then present on the front lines of the action, and then was part of the negotiating team at the follow-up parley. It has always seemed that, as head of the National Council of Negro Women, she was adding much-needed insights – and resources – to the male-dominated leadership structures of Black America and American society as a whole. It has always seemed as if Dorothy Height has been there whenever freedom’s struggle needed her.

Indeed, when it comes to the twentieth-century fight to make America live up to its ideals, there have been few who could match her gleaming credentials. To follow the details of her life and career is to forge in outline significant parts of the last seventy years of American history itself. Those credentials, let it be said, were not a matter of her knowing not only all of the great figures of the Civil Rights Movement but also many prominent Americans from every corner of the society. Nor were they merely a matter of the range of important leadership positions she held. First and foremost, her credentials were self-generated. They sprang from the application of her unshakable commitment and fierce intelligence and resourcefulness and profound sense of compassion to the struggle for equality and justice in America. Dorothy Height was fond of saying, “If the times aren’t ripe, you have to ripen the times.” Her applying that advice to the times in which she lived was America’s good fortune.