Dorothy Height passed away a week ago Tuesday.
The funeral is tomorrow at the National Cathedral. President Obama will give the eulogy.
The New York Times said in its obituary:
Dorothy Height, a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements who was considered both the grande dame of the civil rights era and its unsung heroine, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 98.
…
If Ms. Height was less well known than her contemporaries in either the civil rights or women’s movement, it was perhaps because she was doubly marginalized, pushed offstage by women’s groups because of her race and by black groups because of her sex. Throughout her career, she responded quietly but firmly, working with a characteristic mix of limitless energy and steely gentility to ally the two movements in the fight for social justice.
As a result, Ms. Height is widely credited as the first person in the modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African-Americans as a seamless whole, merging concerns that had been largely historically separate.
Read it all. Indeed, Height saw LGBT concerns as part of that seamless whole. She is recognized as an LGBT ally .
The visionaryproject conducts oral histories “with African American elders who shaped the 20th century.” Here are two foreward-looking videos from its interview with Dorothy Height.
What Needs To Be Done – Race and Poverty
The Civil Rights Movement Today – Institutional Racism