Civil Rights Luminary Dorothy Height Dies at 98

GWEN IFILL:

Height returned to the White House earlier this year when President Obama unveiled an Oval Office copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, the president hailed her as the godmother of the civil rights movement.

Height served as president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, and was a longtime board member of the YWCA, where she began her career as a social worker.

I spoke with her in 2003, when she published her autobiography,

"Open Wide the Freedom Gates." In it, she recalled the history she had witnessed, including her first meeting with a future civil rights icon.

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