03/27/2026
When Dorothy Height showed up at Barnard College in 1929 with her admission letter in hand, a dean looked at her and told her they had already reached their quota of "two Negro students per year." Height had just graduated with honors from an integrated high school in Rankin, Pennsylvania, a small steel town outside Pittsburgh. She had won a national oratorical contest and a $1,000 scholarship. None of it mattered. "It was such a shock to me," she later recalled. "I never thought there would be a racial quota. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep for days."
Unwilling to give up on her dreams, she walked into New York University with her Barnard acceptance letter in hand -- and they admitted her on the spot. She earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees in four years. Years later, Height said the rejection at Barnard taught her the most important lesson of her life: "That there is no advantage in bitterness, that I needed to go into action, which is something I have tried to follow since."
Born on this day in 1912, Dorothy Height would become what President Barack Obama called "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement," observing that she was "the only woman at the highest level of the Civil Rights Movement -- witnessing every march and milestone along the way." Yet for decades, sexism ensured that her name was rarely mentioned alongside the men she worked beside as an equal.
In 1933, Height graduated from NYU with a master's degree in educational psychology and began working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department. But it was a chance encounter four years later, in 1937, that set her on the path of her life's work.
The 25-year-old Height was assigned to es**rt First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt into a meeting of the National Council of Negro Women. The organization's founder, the legendary Mary McLeod Bethune -- the daughter of former slaves who had built a college for Black women and become one of the most powerful figures of the New Deal era -- noticed the young woman's poise and ability.
"What is your name?" Bethune asked.
"Dorothy Height," she whispered.
"We need you," Bethune said.
By the time Height returned from walking Roosevelt to her car, Bethune had already appointed her to a committee. "On that fall day," Height later wrote in her memoir, "the redoubtable Mary McLeod Bethune put her hand on me. She drew me into her dazzling orbit of people in power and people in poverty." Height joined Bethune's crusade to end poll taxes, lynching, and unfair employment practices. "I don't think that outside of my mother and my church," she reflected, "there's been anything of greater influence than Mary McLeod Bethune."
In 1957, two years after Bethune's death, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women -- a position she would hold for the next forty years. She advised presidents from Eisenhower to Obama, pushing Eisenhower on desegregating schools and Johnson on appointing Black women to government positions. And she became the only woman working directly alongside the leaders who would come to be known as the "Big Six" of the Civil Rights Movement: Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.
On August 28, 1963, Height sat an arm's length from King as he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington. But she was not allowed to speak.
Height had helped organize the march. She mobilized thousands of women volunteers and arranged transportation. When it came time to set the program, the male leaders refused to include a single woman as a speaker. Height pushed back.
"We could not get women's participation taken seriously," she recalled. "I've never seen a more immovable force." Organizer Bayard Rustin told her that women were represented in all the groups already -- the churches, the synagogues, the unions -- and didn't need their own voice. Other than a few brief words from Daisy Bates, the only woman the crowd heard from that day was gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. After the march, ten leaders went to the White House to meet with President Kennedy. All of them were men.
As Eleanor Holmes Norton later reflected: "The mistake that was made in not allowing Dorothy Height to speak left such an indelible mark on the movement that it would never again be repeated."
Height didn't wait for permission. The morning after the march, she assembled the women leaders for a meeting she called "After the March -- What?" It was in that room that the women confronted the intersecting forces of racism and sexism head-on, and began organizing on their own terms. "If we did not demand our rights," Height concluded, "we were not going to get them."
What followed was one of the most innovative and little-known initiatives of the entire Civil Rights Movement. In the summer of 1964, Height and her colleague Polly Cowan -- a Jewish civil rights activist whose own sons had volunteered for Freedom Summer -- created "Wednesdays in Mississippi."
Each week, in*******al and interfaith teams of Northern women flew into Jackson, Mississippi, where churches were being bombed and civil rights workers beaten and killed. Wearing white gloves and pearls, these women went behind what Cowan called "the cotton curtain," visiting Freedom Schools, supporting voter registration efforts, and meeting -- often in secret -- with their Southern counterparts.
The Black women from the North met with Black women from the South. The White women from the North reached out to White women in the South. It was the only civil rights program organized by women, for women, as part of a national women's organization.
"Out of Wednesdays in Mississippi," Height later reflected, "we began to build bridges of understanding between Black and White women in the South and Black and White women in communities across the country."
In his autobiography, civil rights leader James Farmer wrote that Height was a full member of the "Big Six" -- not the five men the press typically named, but the six leaders who actually shaped the movement's strategy together. He noted that the press often reduced the group to the "Big Four," excluding both Height and John Lewis, which he attributed to sexism and age bias.
John Lewis himself said Height's ability to bring people together was extraordinary: "She had the rare ability to sort of soothe the conflict, the division, the schism, and bring people together. Being a woman, but more than just being a woman, she could say, 'Now brethren, now brothers and sisters,' and people listened to her."
In 2004 -- seventy-five years after turning her away -- Barnard College made Dorothy Height an honorary alumna. "This action shows the heart of a great institution," Height said. "It not only reaffirms that I was a deserving person, it recognizes its old mistake." She had already received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004 -- making her one of a select few Americans to hold both of the nation's highest civilian honors.
On January 20, 2009, the 96-year-old Height was seated on the stage at the inauguration of Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president. From anti-lynching campaigns as a teenager to this moment, she had been there for all of it.
When Height died on April 20, 2010, at the age of 98, President Obama delivered the eulogy at the Washington National Cathedral and ordered flags flown at half-staff in her honor.
Before she died, she left one final wish: "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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For adult readers interested in learning more about her fascinating story, we highly recommend her memoir "Open Wide the Freedom Gate" at https://www.amightygirl.com/open-wide-the-freedom-gates
To introduce kids to this trailblazer, we recommend the inspiring chapter book "She Persisted: Dorothy Height" for ages 6 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/she-persisted-dorothy-height
Dorothy Height is among the 10 trailblazing women featured in the inspiring book "Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters" for ages 8 to 12 at https://www.amightygirl.com/let-it-shine
For teens and adults, she's featured in "The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience" at https://www.amightygirl.com/the-book-of-gutsy-women
For more books about courageous girls and women of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, visit our blog post on "50 Inspiring Books on Girls & Women of the Civil Rights Movement" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=11177
For books for children and teens about pioneering African American women a variety of disciplines, visit our blog post "99 Books about Extraordinary Black Mighty Girls and Women" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14276
