22. Dorothy Height, Civil Rights Worker
After receiving two college degrees in New York in the 1930s, a feat for a black woman at the time in and of itself, Dorothy Height went on to work for the New York City Welfare Department and a New York branch of the Y.W.C.A. She was active in anti-lynching and desegregation movements. Dorothy Height served on the National Council of Negro Women for over 40 years and even escorted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to a meeting. She was standing on the platform while Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. After a life as a civil rights worker, she was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for her activism in 1994.
