Dorothy Height, 1912–2010

Dorothy Height’s career as a civil-rights activist began with anti-lynching protests in the 1920s and lasted long enough for her to claim a seat on the dais at President Obama’s inauguration. In between, Height was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s two highest civilian awards, for her pivotal role in the civil-rights struggle.

For four decades Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women, where she was “arguably the most influential woman at the top of the civil-rights leadership,” said The Washington Post. An organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, she sat inches from Martin Luther King Jr. as he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. “She did much of her work out of the public spotlight,” quietly using her influence at the highest levels of government and business.

Height was born in Richmond, Va., and grew up mostly in Rankin, Pa., a mill town near Pittsburgh. In high school she was the only black contestant to make it to the national finals of an oratory contest sponsored by the Elks. “The jury, all white, awarded her first prize: a four-year college scholarship,” said The New York Times. Height was admitted to Barnard College in 1929, but was told she’d have to wait—the college had filled its quota of two Negro students. Instead, she got admitted to New York University, from which she earned a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s in psychology.

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Height was working for the YWCA in 1937 when she coordinated a visit by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to speak to the National Council of Negro Women. The council’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, was impressed by Height’s poised, almost regal, bearing and offered her a job. Height “went on to become a regular visitor to the White House, where she advised Mrs. Roosevelt and presidents starting with Dwight Eisenhower,” said The Wall Street Journal.

Height fought for women’s rights, too, and was a mentor to countless professional women. Frequently eclipsed by male colleagues in the civil-rights movement—she and her trademark hats were often even cropped out of news photos—she nevertheless was viewed by her fellow activists as the “glue” keeping the movement together. “We must try,” she said, “to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.”