Yet she had to push to make herself heard as a woman among mostly male civil rights leaders. She was the only woman standing nearby as Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington.

Dorothy Height received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal for her work for racial and gender equality.

Benjamin Hooks died last week at the age of eighty-five. He was a clergyman, lawyer and former head of the NAACP -- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in two thousand seven.

APBenjamin Hooks receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush

Benjamin Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee, at a time when the southern city discriminated against blacks in all areas of public life.

He enrolled in college but was drafted into the Army and served in Italy during World War Two. During training, he and other blacks were kept apart from the whites they trained with.

BENJAMIN HOOKS: "So when I came out of the Army, I had already decided I wanted to be part of breaking down segregation. Because I felt it had to be broken down. I felt it would be broken. So I consciously devoted my life to that."

But because of his color no law school in Tennessee would admit him. So Benjamin Hooks enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, where he earned a law degree in nineteen forty-eight.