Dorothy Height, who as longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women was the leading female voice of the 1960s civil rights movement, died Tuesday. She was 98.
Height, who continued actively speaking out into her 90s, had been at Howard University Hospital for some time. The hospital said in a statement she died of natural causes.

As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, "Stop the lynching." In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement.

President Barack Obama on Monday ordered the flags of the United States to be flown at half-staff on Thursday, the day of Dorothy Height's funeral.

"As a mark of respect for the memory of Dorothy Height, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, that, on the day of her interment, the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset on such day," Obama wrote in a proclamation released by the White House.



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