HUSL Today Salutes

Dorothy Height

Image Source: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/steinhardt/profiles_images/dorothy_height.jpg

Dorothy Height was born on March 24, 1912 in Richmond, Virginia.  In 1929, Height moved to New York to enroll at Barnard. When she arrived at the college, the dean told her that even though she had been accepted, she would have to wait a year because the college only allotted two slots for Negro women both of which had already been filled.  According to the dean, she was “young enough to wait another year." Undaunted, Height, who had been awarded a four-year scholarship for both her grades and her oratorical skills, headed downtown to the NYU Washington Square campus to talk to Dean Ruth Shaffer. Even though Height had not formally applied to NYU, Shaffer invited her to enroll based on a copy of her high school transcript and her acceptance letter from Barnard.

At NYU, Height helped to organize discussion groups for African-American students, and after graduation she took a job with the New York Home Relief Bureau (later the Department of Welfare). She soon moved on to the Harlem branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and eventually joined the YWCA’s national staff, where she spearheaded a movement to integrate the organization. In 1957, she took her place in the forefront of the civil rights movement by becoming president of the NCNW. Often, her memoir reveals, she was the only woman privy to high-level discussions with all the great civil rights leaders. When Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, Height was on stage.
Image Source: http://blacksuperwomen.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/g25145_u23939_a_c_motley.jpg

Image source: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3209/2827300140_7e452f8384.jpg
“Every struggle has the same concerns at the bottom of them,” Height says. “Race, color, creed, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, it all matters. We need to go back to the time of the March on Washington. That time in 1963. That coming together of all backgrounds with a fiery sense of righteous indignation.”







In 2004, then President Bush commended Height on her achievements with a Congressional Gold Medal. Check the footage below:



Height has also been commended on countless other occasions. The footage from a few can be found below:






As chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), Height has been at the epicenter of the civil rights movement for more than seven decades. And the poet Maya Angelou, in the memoir’s foreword, gives Height her due—ranking the activist with Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman—as those who "somehow have been elevated beyond this mortal coil." Angelou goes on to write, “It is difficult to believe they ever really inhabited human form, they were so noble, so fierce."

Her impact on the African American diaspora remains a token of her life's work.  Please keep her uplifted in fellowship and prayer while she remains in Howard University Hospital in stable but critical condition.

HUSL Today Salutes Dorothy Height!!