Born in 1912 in Rankin, Pennsylvania, Dorothy Irene Height has devoted her life to the causes of racial justice and women’s rights – especially the rights and needs of black women and their children. For years she held a series of leadership roles in the national YWCA. Simultaneously she worked for, and then became President of, the National Council of Negro Women. Height has written a memoir entitled Open Wide the Freedom Gates, published by Public Affairs Books.