It is unfathomable to think that we’ve only just heard of 96-year-old civil rights pioneer Dr. Dorothy I. Height, a woman known affectionately as the "godmother of the women’s movement." The Chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, Height remains one of the unsung heroes of the civil-rights movement and here the humanitarian dishes exclusively with wOw about her work, facing racial discrimination at Barnard, Dr. King’s dream and, of course, President-elect Barack Obama.
 
Though we only met Dr. Height this month, she has thankfully been noticed elsewhere – and has garnered 36 honorary doctorate degrees from universities around the country for her many years of advocacy on behalf of African Americans, particularly women, and other people of color around the world.  She’s also received the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freedom Medal and the Citizens Medal Award. In 1994, she, along with Rosa Parks, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian distinction. President George W. Bush signed a document awarding Dr. Height the Congressional Gold Medal, a little bauble whose other prestigious 300 recipients include George Washington, Mother Teresa and Ms. Parks.
 
Confidant to Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., and adviser to six presidents, civil-rights leader Dorothy Height stood by King’s father on the platform when he delivered his legendary, resonating "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. Heights recently told us (with help from the YWCA, an organization that now celebrates its 150th anniversary, where she once worked for 30 years) that Obama’s nomination made King’s dream a reality. “The first thing I thought of when he won was back to the days when I was a young person and I worked in the civil-rights movement to get the vote. When Barack Obama ran his campaign and was elected, I rejoiced like millions of others because it meant that not only did we have the vote, but also that people used the vote. Obama has brought a new kind of enthusiasm, determination and a will to this country. I was so thrilled that a person like he would be able to get the majority of people to somehow line up and back his presidency and realize that changes need to be made.” Height, a woman of wonder and awe, has certainly seen her fair amount of change, some good and some bad.
 
Born in Richmond, VA, on March 24, 1912, Height was educated in public schools in Rankin, PA, right outside of Pittsburgh, where she moved with her family when she was four. “I grew up in a school that was predominantly European,” she recalls. “There were one or two children who didn’t understand what it meant to be an African American. But on the whole I would have to say it was a rich experience because I got to be around people of diverse backgrounds. School was a very good time in my life because I loved it, especially when I got to the junior and senior high-school levels. I was one of those who had a lot of friends and they were all very encouraging to me. My civil-rights interests had begun when I was in high school, when I entered a national oratorical contest on the United States Constitution concentrating on the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. With that I won my four-year scholarship to college. But to this day, I’m still working on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution with its promise of equal justice under law to become a reality. I have had a sense from early on that there was some purpose for my life.”