Mary Church Terrell

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Mary Church Terrell (born September 23, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee - July 24, 1954 in Annapolis, Maryland) was a writer and civil rights activist. Both her parents, Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers, were former slaves. Her father, Robert Reed Church, reputedly became a self-made millionaire off of real-estate investments in Memphis. He was the son of his white master, Charles Church.

Terrell majored in classics at Oberlin College, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1884, one of the first African American women awarded a college degree. During the centennial celebration at Olerlin College in 1933, Mary was recognized as one of the schools one hundred outstanding alumni. In 1948, Oberlin conferred upon her the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. She taught at a black secondary school in Washington and at Wilberforce College in Ohio. She studied in Europe for two years, becoming fluent in French, German, and Italian.

She married Robert Heberton Terrell on October 18, 1891 in Memphis. Robert was a lawyer who was later to become the first black municipal court judge in Washington. He also taught school and became a principal. The Terrells were parents of two children, Phyllis and adopted daughter Mary (deceased). As a high school teacher and principal, Terrell was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education, 1895-1906. She was the first black woman in the United States to hold such a position.

Through her father, Mary met Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. She was especially close to Douglass and worked with him on several civil rights campaigns.

She led the successful fight to integrate eating places in the District of Columbia. Terrell continued to participate in picket lines protesting the segregation of restaurants and theatres even into her eighties.

Local integration laws dating back to 1872 and 1873 had disappeared in the 1890s when the District Code was written. The laws had required all eating-place proprietors to serve any respectable, well-behaved person regardless of color, or face a $1,000 fine and forfeiture of their license. Clark F. King, Dr. Mary Church Terrell, Essie Thompson, and Arthur F. Elmer were refused service at a local restaurant. Attorney Ringgold Hart argued, on April 1, 1950, that the acts were unconstitutional and later won the case against restaurant segregation.

Terrell launched a campaign to reinstate these anti-discrimination laws. On February 28, 1950, she and several colleagues entered segregated Thompson Restaurant. When they were refused service, they promptly filed a lawsuit. In the three years pending a decision in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Terrell targeted other restaurants, this time using tactics such as boycotts, picketing, and sit-ins. Finally, on June 8, 1953, the court ruled that segregated eating places in Washington, DC, were unconstitutional.

Church was an active member on the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was particularly concerned about ensuring the organization continued to fight for black woman getting to vote. With Josephine Ruffin she formed the Federation of Afro-American Woman and in 1896 she became the first president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Woman. The NACW members established day nurseries, kindergartens and helped orphans. In 1896 Mrs. Terrell also founded the National Association of College Women, which later became the National Association of University Women (NAUW).

In 1904 Church was invited to speak at the Berlin International Congress of Woman. She was the only black woman at the conference and determined to make a good impression she gave her speech in German, French and English.

Terrell was also responsible for other civil rights gains. Again in her 80s, she succeeded in persuading the local chapter of the American Association of University Women to admit black members. In 1908, she became a founder of the NAACP's Executive Committee, member of a committee investigating alleged police mistreatment of African Americans, and the first black woman in the United States to earn an appointment to a public school board.

In 1909, Mary was one of two Negro woman (Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the other and both were former Memphians) invited to sign the “Call” and be present at the organizational meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, thus becoming a charter member of the national organization.

During the First World War, Church and her daughter, Phillis Terrell joined Alice Paul and Lucy Burns of the Congressional Union of Woman Suffrage (CUWS) in picketing the White House. She was involved with the War Community Service, which aided in the recreation and, later, the demobilization of Negro serviceman. She worked in the suffrage movement, which pushed for enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Through her life, Mary Church Terrell wrote several books including her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940).

Her house in LeDroit Park still stands.

[edit] Works

• "Lynching from a Negro's Point of View" - North American Review (June 1904)
• A Colored Woman in a White World (1940)

[edit] References

• "Patient Persistence": The Political and Educational Values of Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell. Margaret Nash University of California at Riverside
• Washington Post. Restaurant's Right to Bar Negroes Upheld.
• Washington Post. Assails Mrs. Terrell. June 19, 1904
• Mary Church Terrell[1]
• Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)[2]
• Mary Eliza Church Terrell[3]

This article is based in part on a document created by the National Parks Service, which is part of the US Government. As such, it is presumed to be in the public domain.