Mary Church Terrell in her twenties. 1883. Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell, by Alison M. Parker, ‎The University of North Carolina Press, 2020, p. 32

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Mary Church Terrell is heralded as a prominent civil rights activist and suffragist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As one of the first Black women to earn a college degree, she dedicated her life to fighting against racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. Her legacy continues to inspire generations of women and people of color in the fight for justice and equality.

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Section One: Early Life

Mary “Mollie” Eliza Church Terrell was born on September 23, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee, just as the Civil War was coming to a close. After being emancipated by the Emancipation Proclamation, Terrell’s parents became business owners during the Reconstruction era. Terrell’s father, Robert Reed Church, “was a successful businessman who became one of the South’s first Black millionaires” (Michals, par. 2). Terrell’s mother, Louisa Ayres Church, also owned a profitable business—a hair salon frequented by affluent residents of Memphis. Like the parents of Frances E.W. Harper andIda B. Wells-Barnett, Robert and Louisa Church valued a meaningful education for their children, and enrolled Terrell in the Antioch College Model School in Yellow Springs, Ohio for her elementary and secondary education. Terrell later attended and graduated from Oberlin College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1884, making her one of the first Black women to do so (Michals, par. 2). She also obtained her Master’s degree in education at Oberlin (Michals, par. 2).

“1854 engraving, Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio. It opened in 1852 and was founded by the Christian Connection.”

Section Two: Teaching Background and Study Abroad

Newly graduated from Oberlin College, Terrell pursued a position teaching Black youth. She wrote to several schools and was offered several positions before accepting a teaching post at Wilberforce University, the school where Frances E.W. Harper taught domestic science thirty-four years earlier. Interestingly, Terrell resisted family expectations by pursuing a teaching position. In her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World, she explains that “In the South for nearly three hundred years ‘real ladies’ did not work, and my father was thoroughly imbued with that idea. He wanted his daughter to be a ‘lady’” (Terrell 60). Rejecting her father’s wish, Terrell chose Wilberforce University for its location in the North; she writes,

Wilberforce University is situated about three miles from Xenia, Ohio. This was one of
the reasons I decided to go there rather than to another school. I knew my father would be
less opposed to my teaching in the North than in the South, and I wanted to placate him
as much as I could. (60)

Upon joining the staff at Wilberforce, she began “teaching five classes in subjects totally dissimilar” (61) and served as faculty secretary, regularly producing the “voluminous minutes” (61) in longhand. She also recalls that she “played the organ for the church services every Sunday morning and evening and gave a night every week to choir rehearsal” (61-62). Although her father still expressed some reservation about her teaching, the pair resolved their issues when she visited him in Memphis after a year of teaching at Wilberforce. She explains, “As some girls run away from home to marry the man of their choice and thus brook their father’s displeasure, so I left home and ran the risk of permanently alienating my father from myself to engage in the work which his money had prepared me to do” (Terrell 73).

After her second year at Wilberforce Terrell was “invited” by “a very wealthy and delightful woman” to study abroad (62). She reports that she was “delighted” at the prospect, and she and the unnamed “wealthy friend” made plans about where to stay abroad and what clothes to wear (62). However, Terrell notes that “suddenly there came an invitation for me to teach” at one of the first public high schools for Black children, the M Street Colored High School in Washington, DC (62). The invitation came from Dr. John R. France, “one of the colored members of the Board of Education,” who was seeking Black graduates for teaching positions at M Street (62). After her father suggested he would join her abroad if she waited a year to travel, Terrell turned down the offer to study abroad, a decision she later described as “nerve-wracking”(64). After deciding to move to Washington, she explains, “there is no doubt whatever that this decision just at that time did change the whole course of my life” (65).

In DC, she met fellow teacher, Robert Heberton Terrell, whom she would marry in 1891. After a year of teaching in DC, sometime before 1889, she and her father traveled abroad. After her father left Europe, Terrell spent a year learning French and living with a family in Switzerland before she decided to study German in Berlin, a dream she had had since she was young. While abroad, the only racism Terrell herself experienced was from other Americans who were traveling or staying in the same places as she; in both instances she references, she decides to find a new inn to escape the American racism which did not hold weight in Germany or the other countries in which she traveled. However, she does note that sexism was rampant, particularly against American girls: “It was interesting as well as painful to see that American girls are the victims of the same kind of blanket accusations made by the Germans as those which colored people are the victims in the United States” (89). Similarly, she discusses staying with a woman named Frau Oberprediger, who Terrell relates made constant jokes at the expense of Jewish folks. Terrell writes, “I could not help thinking about the race with which I myself am identified is misrepresented, ridiculed, and slandered by people who feel the same animosity against it as the young German girl manifested toward the Jews” (89). Terrell explained her sentiment to Frau Oberprediger, but her

[…]young German friend did not understand at all[…]She could not believe that any
human being could object to another solely on account of the color of his skin[…[It is
always difficult for one prejudice-ridden human being to understand why his brother
should be obsessed by a prejudice which differs from his own. (90)

Even while abroad and away from U.S. prejudice, Terrell was faced with different discriminations which constantly reminded her of the discrimination faced by Black Americans at home. From Berlin, Terrell next went to Florence, Italy to continue her studies. After a few months in Italy, Terrell returned to the U.S. to pursue her work as an activist.

“In 1906, Mary Church Terrell began teaching at the M Street (Colored) High School, today’s Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School.”

Section Three: Anti-Lynching Campaigns and The National Association of Colored
Women’s Clubs (NACWC)

According to Debra Michals, Terrell first became involved in social justice activism when her friend Thomas Moss was murdered by a group of white citizens in Memphis in 1892 “because his business competed with theirs” (105). Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who lived in Memphis at the time of the lynching, was also a dear friend of Thomas Moss’s. Both women delved deeper into anti-lynch law activism due to the loss of their friend. Terrell herself discusses hearing about lynchings in contrast to a close friend being the victim of a lynching:

A normal human being is always shocked when he reads that a man or a woman has been burned at the stake or shot to death, whether he is acquainted with the victim or not. But when a woman has been closely associated with the victim of the mob from childhood and knows him to be above reproach, the horror and anguish which rend her heart are indescribable. (105-106)

Moss’s death, Terrell explains, made her question her faith in Christianity; how can she be Christian when white Christians commit such horrific acts against Black folks? Further, she was pregnant at the time of Moss’s death; it was her third pregnancy, and only a few days after he was born, her baby passed. While dealing with this grief, she came to a realization: “The more I thought how my depression which was caused by the lynching of Tom Moss and the horror of this awful crime might have injuriously affected my unborn child, if he had lived, the more I became reconciled to what had at first seemed a cruel fate” (108). She reports that she marched in Washington years after this, protesting the continued lynching of Black folks in the U.S., remembering her friend who she lost to that same cruelty.

While working for anti-lynching campaigns and living in DC, Terrell began attending
woman suffrage meetings and became more involved in Black women’s clubs. She writes,

Having observed from attending the Woman Suffrage meetings how much may be
accomplished through organization, I entered enthusiastically into club work among the
women of my own group… As soon as the idea of uniting their forces outside the church
dawned upon [Black women], it took definite, tangible form quickly, and women of all
classes and conditions seized upon it with enthusiasm. (Terrell 147)

Spurred by her passion for club work, Terrell and a group of other educated Black women in Washington, of whom Terrell reports “in Washington…there were probably more…than in any other city in the country,” formed The Colored Women’s League (CWL) in 1892 (148). In addition, Terrell was appointed Chairman of the Educational Committee, where she used her teaching background to support her community. In the CWL’s “night school on a small scale,” Terrell led “a class in English Literature and a class in German several nights a week” (Terrell 148).

The Colored Women’s League was one of a number of organizations for progressive Black women at the time. During the summer of 1895, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin organized the First National Conference of Colored Women of America in Boston; it was during this conference that the Federation of Afro-American Women was established. The Federation’s “purposes and aims were similar to those of the League” (Terrell 148); both clubs centered on promoting social welfare and education amongst Black women as well as addressing issues such as poverty and discrimination. The club’s founding members were activists and educators much like Terrell, including Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Fannie Barrier Williams, Harriet Tubman, Lucy Stone, Adella Hunt Logan, Florida Ridley, Eliza J. Gibbons, and Maria Louise Baldwin. Fannie Barrier Williams, in her essay “The Club Movement,” defines the purpose of Black women’s clubs, a purpose which also moved Terrell to join the movement: “the club movement among [Black women] is something deeper than a mere imitation of white women. It is nothing less than the organized anxiety of women who have become intelligent enough to recognize their own low social condition and strong enough to initiate the forces of reform” (qtd in Gates and Jarrett 55)

 “The club movement among [Black women] is something deeper than a mere imitation of white women. It is nothing less than the organized anxiety of women who have become intelligent enough to recognize their own low social condition and strong enough to initiate the forces of reform.”

 Fannie Barrier Williams

After a debate over which of the two organizations “was the first actually to become national in scope,” the members of each “decided to merge the two organizations into one” (150). On this topic, Terrell explains,

A committee of seven was appointed from the League and seven from the Federation, of
which I was one, to effect the union of the two organizations on the first day the Afro-
American Federation’s second convention met [in Washington]. This joint committee
selected me chairman and proceeded to discuss the terms on which we could unite with justice to each organization. (150)

The women decided to call the organization the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), later to be renamed the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC) (Terrell 151). After a rigorous voting process that repeatedly resulted in a tied vote, Terrell “received a majority of the votes cast and was elected the first president of the National Association of Colored Women,” with Frances E.W. Harper elected as her vice president (Terrell 151). Terrell reflects on this moment:

Naturally, I felt it was a great honor to be elected president of the National Association of Colored Women and I was especially gratified because the members of the committee who finally broke the deadlock declared they had done so because my fairness as Chairman of the Joint Committee convinced them I was the right woman for the place. It was a great undertaking for a young woman with little experience and it required prodigious effort, not to mention patience, to establish the organization on a firm foundation, so that the superstructure would be secure. (Terrell 152)

At only thirty-three years old, Terrell became the first president of the NACWC—the product of the first two national clubs by and for Black women in opposition to their treatment.

“Advertisement for Mary Church Terrell Lecture, June 21, 1905, at Allen Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, Ohio”

After the National Association of Colored Women was founded, Terrell presided over three conventions: one in Nashville in 1897 (the year after the NACW was formed), one in Chicago in 1899, and one in Buffalo, New York, in 1901 (Terrell 188-189). She gained much recognition at these conventions. Terrell’s passion for education had only strengthened from her establishment as president, and she took it upon herself to raise money to create and maintain a series of kindergartens that appealed to the Association for aid. At the close of the convention in Buffalo, when she had served two terms, the delegates unanimously voted to make her honorary president for life.

Section Four: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893

In June of 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition (otherwise known as the Chicago World’s Fair) drew international crowds to Chicago in their stated mission to showcase the technological, cultural, and artistic achievements of the United States and other nations around the world. Terrell writes that her “father invited [her] to visit the World’s Fair while he and his family were there, and generously paid the expense of the trip” (110). Terrell reports, “two impressions of the World’s Fair which have left a more delightful flavor in my memory than anything else:” the honor given to Frederick Douglass by white and Black folks at the Fair, and the opportunity to meet the poet Paul Dunbar (110-111). Douglass and Dunbar were in charge of the Haiti exhibit at the Fair. However, Terrell’s participation in the Exposition went far beyond being a mere spectator.

“In establishing the structure of the fair,” Paddon and Turner write, “President Benjamin Harrison failed to include any racial minorities in his 208-person Board of National Commissioners” (19-20). Many of the exhibits at the fair’s Women’s Building actively excluded Black women as well, and Terrell joined an organized group of her colleagues and other Black women to protest the exclusion during the last week of the fair. Calling themselves the“Congress of Colored Women,” the protesters showcased the achievements of Black women and demanded recognition within the larger women’s suffrage movement. Terrell’s leadership was crucial to the impact of the Congress and helped lay the foundation for future activism (Bertuca et al.).

The Woman’s Era

“The Woman’s Era” was a monthly newspaper  published by Josephine Ruffin and her daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley. It helped the Boston group become “a communication nerve center for inter-city cooperation”, functioning as a forum for news concerning Black women throughout the country. Women who submitted news for their regions included Mary Church Terrell in Washington, Fannie Barrier Williams of Chicago, Alice Ruth Moore (later known as Alice Dunbar-Nelson) of New Orleans, Victoria Earle Matthews of New York, Josephine Silone-Yates of Kansas City, and Elizabeth Ensley of Denver.

“The Women’s Era’ vol. 2 no. 2, featuring an interview with Terrell on her initiative through the NACW to fund kindergartens.”

“I believed it was the duty of colored women to do everything in their power to save the children during the early, impressionable period of their life… It is gratifying to recall that the first fund started by the organization was raised to help the children”

Terrell (189-190).

Works Cited

“1854 engraving, Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio.” Old Paper Studios, 1854. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023. alamy.com/stock-photo-1854-engraving-antioch-college-at-yellow-springs-ohio-it-opened-in-57122315.html?imageid=74975BD5-B636-447B-AD7F-1C1EDCA2791C&p=35473&pn=1&searchId=ff122c36b097b30eb8038a42a881d331&searchtype=0.

“Advertisement for Mary Church Terrell Lecture, June 21, 1905, at Allen Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.” The College of Wooster, 23 Jan. 2019. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023. wooster.edu/2019/01/23/civil-and-womens-rights-activist-mary-church-terrell-featured-in-traveling-exhibit/.

Gates Jr., Henry Louis and Jarrett, Gene Andrew. The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938. Princeton University Press, 2021.

“In 1906, Mary Church Terrell began teaching at the M Street (Colored) High School, today’s Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School.” Wikipedia photo, scanned from a public postcard. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:M_Street_High_School_(colored)_Washington,_DC_1906.jpg.

“Mary Terrell in her twenties.” 1883. Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell, by Alison M. Parker, The University of North Carolina Press, 2020, p. 32.

Michals, Dr. Debra. “Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954).” National Women’s History Museum, 2017. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023. womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-church-terrell.

Terrell, Mary Church. A Colored Woman in a White World. Humanity Books, 2005.

Women’s Era Club. “The Women’s Era” v.2:no.2, (1895:May). Ruffin, Josephine St. Pierre. Accessed 24 Apr. 2023. ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/9593xc69v.