The leading female voice of the 1960s civil rights movement and a participant in historic marches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, died Tuesday. She was 98.

Height led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. She continued actively speaking out into her 90s but had been at Howard University Hospital for some time. The hospital said in a statement she died of natural causes.

President Barack Obama called her "the godmother of the civil rights movement" and a hero to many Americans. Obama said in a statement that Height was the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement and witnessed "every march and milestone along the way."

One of Height's sayings was, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said that the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

The late activist C. DeLores Tucker once called Height an icon to all African-American women.

"I call Rosa Parks the mother of the civil rights movement," Tucker said in 1997. "Dorothy Height is the queen."

Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

"He spoke longer than he was supposed to speak," Height recalled in a 1997 Associated Press interview. But after he was done, it was clear King's speech would echo for generations, she said, "because it gripped everybody."

Height became president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957 and held the post until 1997, when she was 85. She remained chairman of the group.

At the YWCA, Dr. Height rose rapidly through the ranks from a post with the Harlem YWCA in New York City to s eve ral staff positions of increasing responsibility in the organization. Of her years at the YWCA, Dr. Height is proudest of her efforts to direct the attention of the organization to issues of racial justice. During the YWCA's 1946 convention, Dr. Height coordinated the introduction of a policy to integrate its facilities nationwide and was elected national interracial education secretary of the organization. In 1965, the YWCA named Dr. Height the first director of its new Center for Racial Justice. In 1970, the YWCA National Convention adopted the One Imperative: “To thrust our collective power towards the elimination of racism, wher eve r it exists by any means necessary.”

Dr. Height's continuing affiliation with NCNW began with her meeting Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of the organization, on November 7, 1937 – a date Dr. Height refers to as the turning point of her life. So began her lifelong affiliation with NCNW - working closely with Mrs. Bethune at first; as the fourth elected president of the organization from 1957 – February 2, 1998 ; and as Chairperson of its Board of Directors and President Emerita since 1997. As NCNW president, Dr. Height helped organize and coordinate the 1963 March on Washington . With Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Phillip Randolph and others she participated in virtually all major civil and human rights efforts in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. And she has been in the forefront of the quest and advocacy for women's rights to full and equal employment, pay and education – in the United States and countries throughout the world.

Dr. Height's commitment to international work in her field began in earnest in 1952 when she served as visiting professor at the University of Delhi, India. She continued her international work with her involvement in the Women's Federation of the World Council of Churches, and began her work in South Africa after accompanying Margaret Hickey, the then chair of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid there in 1974. Dr. Height returned to work with the Black Women's Federation of South Africa in 1977 and several times thereafter.

For her tireless efforts on behalf of the less fortunate, President Ronald Reagan presented her with the Citizens' Medal Award for distinguished service in 1989. Dr. Height has received many other awards during her lifetime of service, including over twenty-four honorary degrees.

In a ceremony honoring her lifetime of achi eve ments, held in the United States Capital Rotunda in Washington, D.C. on March 24, 2004, Dr Height was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. She joins the august company of some 300 other Gold Medal recipients, among these, George Washington, the first recipient of the Medal in 1776, Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, and Rosa Parks.

On September 7, 2004, Dr. Height was inducted into the Democracy Hall of Fame International on the Capitol Hill Campus of the National Graduate University in Washington, D.C. The Hall of Fame for Democracy – the first of its kind in the world - was created by former members of Congress and others on the governing board of the National Graduate University as part of the University's mission “to strengthen the democratic freedoms that make possible our science, economic enterprise, [and] rule of law, and encourage improvement in eve ry sphere of life.”

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