At press time we learned of the passing of legendary civil rights leader and godmother of the movement, Dr. Dorothy I Height. The longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women died Tuesday at the age of 98 after several visits to Howard University Hospital.
Height has been at the middle of every chapter of the Civil Rights Movement in America, sitting a few feet away from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he gave the historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial.
In May of 2008 Height told Chronicle senior editor Bankole Thompson during an exclusive interview at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History that she was hopeful America would elect an African American as president.
“I hope that we would find that there are enough people in the country who realize the importance of giving opportunity on the basis of qualifications rather than race and sex to make a choice in this election, ” Height said in the interview focused on a Barack Obama presidency.
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