Dorothy I. Height, founding matriarch of civil rights movement, dies at 98

The Washington Post

By Bart Barnes Special to The Washington Post

Tuesday, April 20, 2010; 7:34 AM

Dorothy I. Height, 98, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades, died early Tuesday morning of natural causes, a spokesperson for the National Council of Negro Women said.

Ms. Height was among the coalition of African American leaders who pushed civil rights to the center of the American political stage after World War II, and she was a key figure in the struggles for school desegregation, voting rights, employment opportunities and public accommodations in the 1950s and 1960s.
She died at 3:41 a.m. at Howard University Hospital, a spokesman there said.

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