Dorothy Height. Via Google.

On the 102nd anniversary of her birth, Google has honored civil rights and feminist icon Dorothy Height with a doodle.

Called the “godmother of the civil rights movement” by President Barack Obama and one of D.C.’s “most distinguished citizens” by former Mayor Adrian Fenty, Height helped organize the March on Washington, co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, was the president of the National Council of Negro Women (which is headquartered in a building named for her), and oversaw the desegregation of the YWCA. After her death at age 98 in 2010, Obama remembered Height in a eulogy delivered at the National Cathedral:

The great test of a life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, is to harness that instinct; to redirect it towards advancing the greater good; toward changing a community and a country for the better; toward doing the Lord’s work.

I sometimes think Dr. King must have had Dorothy Height in mind when he gave that speech. For Dorothy Height met the test. Dorothy Height embodied that instinct. Dorothy Height was a drum major for justice. A drum major for equality. A drum major for freedom. A drum major for service. And the lesson she would want us to leave with today — a lesson she lived out each and every day — is that we can all be first in service. We can all be drum majors for a righteous cause. So let us live out that lesson. Let us honor her life by changing this country for the better as long as we are blessed to live. May God bless Dr. Dorothy Height and the union that she made more perfect.

The D.C. public library named for her — the Dorothy I. Height/Benning Neighborhood Library — will celebrate her life tonight with an exhibit, presentation and reception. A hat etiquette workshop and tea will follow on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m.