“I cannot help wondering what I might have become and might have done if I had lived in a country which had not circumscribed and handicapped me on account of my race, but had allowed me to reach any heights I was able to attain.”
– Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell’s Story
Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on September 23, 1863, the year the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. She was the daughter of former slaves, who were mixed race. Her father owned several successful businesses, and was one of the first Black millionaires in the South. As a result, Church Terrell and her siblings were able to have many opportunities that were not available to most African Americans at the time, including higher education. Her parents divorced when she was young, and sent her to boarding school in Ohio.
Church Terrell attended Oberlin College, one of the first colleges to admit African Americans, and in 1888, Church Terell became one of the first African American women to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. After graduating, Church Terrell taught classical languages at Wilberforce University, one of the nation’s first historically Black colleges and preparatory schools. She then went abroad for two years to study languages in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany.
Church Terrell moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught Latin at M Street High School, one of the first public high schools for African Americans. There, she met Robert Terrell, the chair of the languages department, whom she married in 1891. Robert Terrell was one of the first African American men to attend Harvard University, and would go on to become the country’s first African American federal judge.
In 1892, Church Terrell’s childhood friend Thomas Moss was lynched in her hometown of Memphis, because his business was considered competition by local white business owners. This tragedy had an incredible impact on Church Terrell, and she, along with her journalist friend Ida B. Wells, became one of the first people to speak out publicly about lynching. Church Terrell made speeches across the country and abroad about the need for federal intervention against lynchings, and the unequal conditions within African American communities caused by segregation and Jim Crow laws. Church Terrell also wrote several influential essays about lynching, including “Lynching from a Negro’s Point of View,” in 1904 in the journal The North American Review.
In 1894, Church Terrell founded the Colored Women’s League with Anna Julia Cooper, with a mission to “promote the intellectual, social and moral accomplishments of African Americans,” and focused on improving education for African Americans. The League merged with the National Federation of Afro-American Women to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896, two months after the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision upheld racial segregation. Church Terrell coined the organization’s motto of racial uplift, “Lifting As We Climb,” and served as its president from 1896 to 1901.
Church Terrell served on the Washington, D.C. school board for over a decade, beginning in 1895, and became the first Black woman to serve on a board of education in the United States.
Church Terrell was also a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. She saw voting rights as critical to the empowerment of African Americans, and marched at the 1913 Suffrage Parade, where she and other African American suffragists were forced to march in the segregated section at the back. Church Terrell also helped to organize the 1922 Silent March, to pressure Congress to pass anti-lynching legislation.
In 1925, Mary Church Terrell began writing her memoir, A Colored Woman in a White World, which she was unable to sell to publishers, and self-published in 1940.
In her eighties, Church Terrell led the movement to integrate restaurants in Washington, D.C., organizing some of the first sit-ins at segregated restaurants. At age 86, she instigated the groundbreaking 1953 U.S. Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. J.R. Thompson’s Co. Inc., which outlawed discrimination in public places in the nation’s capital. The case helped usher in school integration, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education. Mary Church Terrell died of cancer two months after that decision was passed in the Supreme Court, on July 24, 1954, at the age of 91.
Featured in the Film
Treva B. Lindsey
Treva B. Lindsey, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. She is the author of the 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. She is a 2020-2021 ACLS/Mellon Scholar and Society Fellow and was the inaugural Equity for Women and Girls of Color Fellowship at Harvard University. She is also the author of many articles and book chapters on African American history and culture and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, grants and fellowships.
Brittany Packnett Cunningham
Brittany Packnett Cunningham is a social justice activist, educator, and writer. Leading at the intersection of culture and justice, she has and continues to build platforms to amplify, educate, and activate everyday people to take transformative action against every form of injustice. She is an NBC News and MSNBC contributor, former co-host of iHeart Radio’s Best Political Podcast of 2019, Pod Save The People, and is currently readying her own media platform from which to host broader conversations on social change. Brittany is a former elementary teacher, education executive and two-time Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She was a member of President Obama’s 21st Century Policing Task Force and the Ferguson Commission. Brittany’s forthcoming book, We Are Like Those Who Dream, is due to hit shelves in 2021.
Her Life & Times
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1863
Mary Church Terrell was born
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IN HISTORY - 1880s-1940s
Lynchings take place throughout the U.S.
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1884
Church Terrell graduated from Oberlin College
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1885
Church Terrell Taught at Wilberforce University
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1888
Church Terrell spent two years studying languages abroad
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1890
Church Terrell taught at M Street High School
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1891
Married Robert H. Terrell
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1892
Church Terrell’s friend Thomas Moss was lynched
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1894
Church Terrell founded the Colored Women’s League
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1895
Church Terrell became the first Black woman to serve on a board of education in the U.S.
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1896
Church Terrell became president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
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IN HISTORY - 1896
Plessy v. Ferguson upheld racial segregation
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1900
Church Terrell spoke at the National American Woman Suffrage Association
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1904
Church Terrell spoke at the International Congress of Women in Berlin
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1904
“Lynching from a Negro’s Point of View,” in The North American Review
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1906
Church Terrell spoke about segregation at the United Women’s Club of Washington, D.C.
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1907
Terrell wrote “What it Means to Be Colored in the Capital of the U.S.”
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1907
Terrell made midwestern speaking tour
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1909
Church Terrell became a founding member of the NAACP
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1913
Church Terrell marched in the Women’s Suffrage Parade
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IN HISTORY - 1920
Women’s suffrage amendment passed
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1920
Church Terrell campaigned for President Harding
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IN HISTORY - 1921
President Harding demanded justice for African Americans
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1922
Church Terrell helped organize Silent March against lynching
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IN HISTORY - 1922
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill
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1925
Robert Terrell died
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1932
Church Terrell served as an adviser to the Republican National Committee
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1940
Church Terrell self-published her autobiography
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IN HISTORY - 1948
Truman demanded Congress take action against lynching
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1949
Elected chairman for the Committee for the Enforcement of D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws
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1950
Church Terrell began campaign to desegregate restaurants in D.C.
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1953
Discrimination in public places outlawed in D.C.
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1954
Brown v. Board of Education ended racial segregation in public schools
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1954
Mary Church Terrell died
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IN HISTORY - 1955
The murder of Emmett Till
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IN HISTORY - 1964
The Civil Rights Act
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IN HISTORY - 2014
Murder of Michael Brown Jr. & Protests at Ferguson
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IN HISTORY - 2014
Ferguson Commission Created
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IN HISTORY - 2020
Anti-lynching bill passed in Congress but continues to be debated
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May 25, 2020
George Floyd murdered by police officers
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2020
Protests for racial justice for Black lives take place around the world