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SPEAKER_05: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan,
SPEAKER_00: and this is Encyclopedia Wamanica. Today's activist was a truly legendary leader of the civil rights and women's rights movements during the 20th century. Considered alternately the grand dame of the civil rights movement and its unsung hero, she was a major activist for nearly 80 years, during which she ran some of the country's most important nonprofit and advocacy groups. She also served as a trusted confidant and advisor to a string of American presidents. Please welcome Dorothy Height.
SPEAKER_00: Dorothy Irene Height was born on March 24th, 1912 in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, James, was a building contractor, and her mother, Fanny, worked as a nurse. As a young child, Dorothy suffered from severe asthma, and doctors told her family that she was unlikely to survive into adulthood. When Dorothy was young, her family moved to Rankin, Pennsylvania, a town near Pittsburgh. There, she attended integrated schools and first became involved in civil rights work. While still in high school, Dorothy began volunteering for anti-lynching and voting rights campaigns. Dorothy was a brilliant student and particularly excelled at public speaking. In high school, she won a national oratory contest on the US Constitution. Her prize was a four-year college scholarship. In 1929, Dorothy applied to Barnard College in New York City and was accepted. But that summer, she was asked to meet with a Barnard dean who informed her that she wouldn't be able to start classes in the fall because the school had already reached its quota for black students. She would have to wait another year to attend. Very understandably upset, Dorothy took the subway straight down to New York University, where she was quickly admitted into their undergraduate program. Four years later, in 1933, she earned her bachelor's degree in education, and two years after that, she received her master's in psychology. Following graduation, Dorothy became a social worker with the New York City Welfare Department, where, once again, she excelled. After just a few years there, she was hired as the assistant executive director for the Harlem YWCA, which was a very big role at the time. At the YWCA, Dorothy's first public act of business was to bring attention to the plight of black women in New York City who worked as domestic day laborers. These domestic laborers would go to specific street corners in Brooklyn and the Bronx every morning, known colloquially as slave markets, and wait for white women from the suburbs to drive up and hire them for a day's work, which usually paid a very meager 15 cents an hour. Dorothy testified about these so-called slave markets in front of the New York City Council. Her testimony was picked up by the media and brought national attention to the issue. In the late 1930s, Dorothy was given the honor of escorting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to a meeting of the esteemed National Council of Negro Women, or NCNW. At the meeting, Dorothy met the council's founder, legendary educator and activist, Mary McLeod Bethune, who was highly impressed by Dorothy's intelligence and fire. Dorothy, for her part, was inspired by Mary to start working with the NCNW. In a continuation of her youthful activism, Dorothy focused on putting an end to lynching and on criminal justice reform. By the mid-1940s, Dorothy had risen up the ranks to become a member of the YWCA's national leadership team. In 1946, she was entrusted with overseeing the desegregation of all facilities nationwide, a big and complex job given the continued resistance to integration across the country. In 1957, Dorothy was named the fourth president of the NCNW, a job that she would hold for the next 40 years during much of the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Under her leadership, the NCNW became heavily involved in voting rights campaigns and a plethora of social programs in the Deep South to benefit Black communities and shed light on continued racism and systemic racial disparities. One of these programs, called Wednesdays in Mississippi, brought interracial groups of Northern women down to Mississippi to meet with Black and white women there and to see firsthand the enormous structural constraints experienced by African Americans on a daily basis. All of her work for the YWCA and NCNW left Dorothy with formidable social and political organizing skills and knowledge. This not only led to her prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement, but also meant that she was constantly sought after by the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson for her advice on political issues. It really can't be overstated how well respected Dorothy was as an activist, organizer, and strategic thinker. In 1963, Dorothy was one of the chief organizers of the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic I Have a Dream speech. Though she was an award-winning orator herself and sat on stage less than an arm's length away from Dr. King, she was not invited to speak. Dorothy was deeply unhappy with the gender discrimination she experienced in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the racial discrimination she experienced in the Women's Rights Movement. Nevertheless, she continued to persevere in both while simultaneously trying to shed what light she could on these issues. As a result, Dorothy is generally credited with being the first person in the modern Civil Rights Movement to take what we now call an intersectional or merged approach to the problems of equality for women and for African Americans that had historically been considered by many to be separate and distinct issues. In 1965, Dorothy founded the YWCA Center for Racial Justice, which she led until 1977. In 1971, Dorothy helped found the National Women's Political Caucus, along with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and Betty Friedan, among others. In the 1980s, Dorothy, in conjunction with NCNW, started a national program called Black Family Reunions that sponsored massive celebrations of the history, traditions, and culture of African Americans in cities across the country. The first reunion in 1986 was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. During this period, Dorothy also became heavily involved in AIDS activism. In 1994, Dorothy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. 10 years later, she received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush. These represent the highest civilian honors available in the United States. Dorothy also received more than two dozen honorary degrees in her lifetime, including degrees from Harvard, Princeton, and Barnard. Dorothy passed away on April 20th, 2010. She was 98 years old. Though she was often overshadowed by her male and white female contemporaries, Dorothy was a major force for equality and justice in America for almost 80 years. From the social activism of the New Deal era, through the civil rights movement, and beyond, Dorothy played a truly major, if not always credited, role in shaping the social landscape of the United States we know today. All month, we're talking about activists. For more on why we're doing what we're doing, check out our newsletter, Womanika Weekly. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Encyclopedia Womanika. Follow me directly on Twitter, at Jenny M. Kaplan. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye. Before you go, I wanna share a show with you from some of our friends. It's called Sunstorm, hosted by iGen Poo and Alicia Garza. iGen and Alicia are two of the leading organizers in America, and the show is all about how women help each other stay joyful and powerful amidst the chaos of life today. This season is all about finding your lane. Each week, they talk to their friends and heroes about inspirations, finding your center, and what each one of us can do to make the changes we wanna see in the world. Subscribe to Sunstorm wherever you're listening now. Subscribe to Sunstorm wherever you're listening now.
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