IT WAS crazy-hot the first time I saw the iconic Dorothy Height in person. Height, though, appeared cool in her trademark hat as she surveyed the sweltering masses at a Black Family Reunion Celebration.

Given her advanced age and her spot in history, I was surprised that she wasn’t off somewhere sequestered in an air-conditioned tent until her time to speak. She had more than earned the privilege of being comfortable, because if Rosa Parks was the mother of the civil-rights movement, then Height was the godmother. Height, who died yesterday at age 98, dedicated her life to the struggle for equality – not just for blacks but for women of all races.

Hers was usually the only female face at high-level meetings during the modern civil-rights movement. If you look carefully at certain photos of the late Rev. Martin Luther King as he delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington, you’ll spot Height on the platform in the mostly male crowd. She had fought unsuccessfully to have a woman in the lineup to address the issue of women’s rights. (Bayard Rustin, of Chester, was one of those who nixed the idea.) Height didn’t become embittered, though. She knew she had to keep it moving, as we say these days. Height had so much more to accomplish.

By the time of her death from natural causes at Howard University Hospital, Height had spent four decades at the helm of the National Council for Negro Women. During her lifetime, she was an adviser to a number of U.S. presidents including Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson, in 2004 became a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal of Freedom and, in 1994, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“She’s the last of the modern civil-rights leaders,” Temple University’s Charles Blockson said yesterday. “She was like a modern Harriet Tubman. She was always there. When other people retired or died, Dorothy Height was there.” “She was determined like no one I’ve ever seen,” said Bettye Collier-Thomas, a Temple University history professor, who worked with Height to open a museum in honor of Mary McLeod Bethune. “She’d say to me, ‘Dr. Collier-Thomas, you’ve got to learn to work beyond pain. It’s mind over matter.’ ”

Not a whole lot is known about the personal life of Height, who never married and had no children. My understanding is that her 2003 autobiography, “Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir,” doesn’t dwell that much on personal details. But here’s what we do know.

Born in Richmond, Va., Height moved to Rankin, Pa., near Pittsburgh, as a young girl. She showed early promise as a student by a winning a prestigious award. After being accepted to Barnard College in 1929, she was barred from entering because the school already had filled its quota of two Negroes. So, Height enrolled at New York University, where she received bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Her first job out of a school was as a caseworker for New York City’s welfare department.

In 1937, while working with the Young Women’s Christian Association, Height came to the attention of Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women. Height had been escorting first lady Eleanor Roosevelt when Bethune asked her to volunteer with the fledgling organization. “Bethune was always looking for young women to pull over to the National Council of Negro Women, which she had founded two years earlier,” said Collier-Thomas, who earlier this year published “Jesus, Jobs and Justice: African American Women and Religion.”

Over the years, Height rose through the ranks of the national YWCA while also gaining more responsibilities with the National Council of Negro Women. In 1957, she succeeded Bethune as president. The causes she championed were the huge social issues of the day -anti-lynching efforts; desegregation of the U.S. armed forces; desegregation of public accommodations; and criminal-justice reform. Besides serving as president of the council, Height served as president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a black Greek organization, from 1946 to 1957.

“What Dorothy Height did early on was she hired someone to shop for her,” Collier-Thomas said. “She was always impeccable. You wonder how did this woman have time to put herself together like that? She had a cousin, Mr. Hall, who lived with her for years. He would do everything for her. That made it possible for her to come and go and function at that level. . . . Dorothy Height was freed of the normal kinds of things, so her life became her work.

“This woman got up every day and went to her office and was there by 8 o’clock,” Collier-Thomas continued. “Few people her age are able to do that. She lived life right to the end. It is the end of an era. This is a woman who was born in 1912. This is a woman who lived through Jim Crow segregation. This is a woman who lived through lynching. This is a woman who lived through the women’s movement. She was there when women got the vote. Her life traveled along the major movements of the 20th century . . . and she did not do it from a rocking chair retired. She stayed out there in the fray.”

Height was given a position of prominence at the inauguration ceremony for President Obama. “I never thought I would live to see this,” she told the New York Times. It seems right that she did.