March 24, 1912
Educator and civil rights pioneer Dorothy Irene Height was born.
By the 1930s, she was working with the Young Women’s Christian Association to improve conditions for Black female workers, which led to her election to the national office and the integration of the YMCA.
“We cannot afford to be separate,” she said. “We have to see that all of us are in the same boat.”
She coordinated strategies with Martin Luther King Jr. and was one of the chief organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.
“We have to improve life, not just for those who have the most skills and those who know how to manipulate the system,” she said, “but also for and with those who often have so much to give but never get the opportunity.”
She headed the National Council of Negro Women, which included “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” where interracial groups of women traveled to the state to push voter registration.
In 1994, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a decade later, she received the Congressional Gold Medal. When she died in 2010, President Obama called her “the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement.” In 2017, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp honoring her.
Before her death, she said, “I want to be remembered as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom. … I want to be remembered as one who tried.”
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