Dorothy Height Leads National Council of Negro Women, Amplifies Black Women's Voice

Dorothy Height becomes president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957 and serves for 40 years. Under her leadership the NCNW connects civil rights activism with the specific concerns of Black women — economic empowerment, welfare rights, and representation. Height works alongside but often in the shadow of male leaders; she is notably absent from the podium at the 1963 March on Washington despite being the only woman in the inner civil rights leadership circle. Her career documents the gendered exclusion within civil rights organizing.