Born to formerly enslaved Africans in 1863, Mary Eliza Church Terrell was raised on values of hard work and tenacity [1]. Her parents became business owners after obtaining freedom, affording her family the position of paying for Mary to attend Oberlin College in Ohio, where she received a bachelor’s in the Classics in 1884 and a master’s degree in Education in 1888. This made her one of the first African American women who earned a college degree [5].

In the midst of her academic journey, Mary Church Terrell started to attend the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) meetings, where she never hesitated to speak up for her rights. During one of the conventions, she spoke out saying “...as a colored woman, I hope this association will include in the resolution the injustices of various kinds of which colored people are the victims” [3]. Despite the consequent approval of the resolution by NAWSA, some women leaders were not quick to accept women of color into the fight, assuming that this would deter the Congress from granting white women the right to vote [1]. And as time went on Terrell regretted their partnership, since NAWSA decided to prioritize white women’s voting rights, which was eventually at the cost of keeping African-American women from the polls [3]. Due to this, Terrell decided to pioneer her own journey.

Tragic events of March 9th, 1892, known as the People’s Grocery Lynching, sparked her activism even further, when she learned that her friend, Thomas Moss, a Black business owner was lynched by his white competitors because of the success of his grocery store. As a result, she formed the Colored Women’s League, which addressed the social problems of the Black community. And, just four years later, she founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), where she became the president. Her motto “Lifting as We Climb,” was adopted as a central motto of the campaign, which accompanied them on the way towards the egalitarian future [4, 6]. Her speech at the International Congress of Women in Berlin, Germany in 1904 was delivered in German and French and raised the issues of injustice for Black women globally. She appeared in newspaper headlines all over Europe, which subsequently requested more information on America’s racial dilemma [2, 5].

Following her speech, Terrell mainly focused on her work in education and outreach, which helped to popularize anti-segregation notions. Terrell became one of two female founding charter members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, published her biography “A Colored Woman in a White World” in 1940, and became the first African American woman admitted to the American Association of University Women in 1949. Even toward the end of her life, she fought to remove segregation, when at the age of 86, she was denied service at the John R. Thompson Restaurant. As a result, just one year before she died, she witnessed the Supreme Court ruling that segregation in eating facilities is unconstitutional [4, 5].

Authors: Dr. Ashley Milton, Alyssa Kalac, Marina Tsoumpa

References:

1. Biography (2014). Mary Church Terrell. [online] Biography. Available at: https://www.biography.com/activist/mary-church-terrell.

2. Callahan, N.N. (2016). A Rare Colored Bird: Mary Church Terrell, Die Fortschritte Der Farbigen Frauen, And the International Council of Women’s Congress in Berlin, Germany, 1904 Noaquia N. Callahan. https://legacy.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GHI_Washington/Publications/Supplements/Supplement_13/93.pdf.

3. Mary Church Terrell and Debra Newman Ham (1940). A colored woman in a white world. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, pp.143–144.

4. Michals, Dr.D. (2019). Mary Church Terrell. [online] National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-church-terrell.

5. Social Welfare History Project (2012). Terrell, Mary Church. [online] Social Welfare History Project. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/terrell-mary-church/.

6. Steptoe, T. (2007). Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) •. [online] BlackPast. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/terrell-mary-church-1863-1954/.