Dorothy Height Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Dorothy Irene Height, an American administrator and educator, was a civil rights and women's rights activist specifically focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.  Height graduated from Rankin High School in 1929. She received a scholarship from the Elks, which helped her to attend college. She was admitted to Barnard College in 1929, but upon arrival was denied entrance because the school had an unwritten policy of admitting only two black students per year. She enrolled instead at New York University, earning an undergraduate degree in 1932 and a master's degree in educational psychology the following year. She pursued further postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work. Height started working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department, and at the age of 25, she began a career as a civil rights activist, joining the National Council of Negro Women. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women. In 1944 she joined the national staff of the YMCA. She was also an active member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority throughout her life, developing leadership training programs and ecumenical education programs. She served as National President of the sorority from 1946 to 1957. In 1957, Height was named President of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held until 1997. During the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, she organized "Wednesdays in Mississippi,"^. American leaders regularly took her counsel, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Height encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African-American women to positions in government.  In 1974, she was named to the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report  a response to the infamous "Tuskegee Syphilis Study". In 1990, Height, along with 15 other African Americans, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. The musical stage play If This Hat Could Talk, based on her memoirs Open Wide The Freedom Gates, debuted in 2005.