"Mary Church Terrell"(September 23,1863-July 24,1954)

Daughter to former slaves,was one of the first African American women to a college degree.

She became an activist who led several important associations and worked for civil rights and suffrage.Mary was born in in Memphis Tennessee,to Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers,Robert was mixed-race and said to be the son of his white master,Charles Church.He reputedly became a self-made millionaire from real-estate investments in Memphis and was married twice.When Mary was six years old,her parents sent her to the Antioch College Model School in Yellow Springs, Ohio,for her elementary and secondary education.Mary,known to members of her family as "Mollie,"and her brother were born were born during their father's first marriage,which terminated in divorce.Their half-siblings,Robert, Jr. and Annette,were born during father's second marriage,to Anna,(wright) Church.When Mary majored in classics at Oberlin College,she was an African American woman among mostly white male students.The freshman class nominated her as class poet,and she was elected to two of the college's literary societies.She also served as an editor of the Oberlin Review.When she earned her bachelor's degree in 1884,she was one of of the first African-American women to have earned a college degree.She earned a master's degree from Oberlin in 1888.Mary taught school at a black secondary school in Washington,DC, and at Wilberforce College,an historically black college founded by the Methodist Church in Ohio.She studied for two years,where she became fluent in French,German,and Italian.On October 18,1891,in Memphis Mary married Robert Heberton Terrell,a lawyer who became the first black municipal court judge in Washington, DC.The couple met through the M Street School,a top academic high school,where Robert taught and became principal.Mary gave birth to three children who died in infancy,but gave birth to a daughter,Phyllis,who survived.The Terrells later adopted a second daughter,Mary.Through her father Mary, met Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.She was especially close to Frederick and worked with him on several civil rights campaignsShortly after her marriage to Robert she considered retiring from activism to settle down. It was Frederick who persuaded her that her talents required her to do otherwise.As a high school teacher and principal,she 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.She was also an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.Mary was particularly concerned that the organization continue fighting for suffrage among black women.With Josephine St.Pierre Ruffin,she formed the Federation of Afro-American Women.In 1896,she became the first president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.NACWS members established day nurseries and kindergartens,and helped oprphans.Also in 1896,Mary founded the National Association of College Women, which later became the National Association of University Women (NAUW).The league started a training program and kindergarten before these became included in the Washington public schools.The success of the League's educational initiatives led to her appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education.Historians have generally emphasized Mary role as an activist and community leader during the Progressive Era.She also had a prosperous career as a journalist (she simply called herself a writer).Using the pen name "Euphemia Kirk," She published in both the black and white press to promote the African American Women's Club Movement.She wrote for a variety of newspapers "published either by or in the interest of colored people,such as the A.M.E. Church Review of Philadelphia,PA;the southern Workman of Hampton,VA;THE Indianapolis Freeman;the Afro-American of Baltimore;the Washington Tribune;the Chicago Defender,the New York Age;the voice of the Negro;the Women's World;and the Norfolk Journal and guide.Mary also contributed to the Washington Evening Star and the Washington evening post.She aligned the African-American Women's Club Movement and the overall struggle of black women and the black race for equality.In 1892 she was elected as the first woman president of the prominent Washington DC black debate organization Bethel Literary and Historical Society.In 1904 Mary was invited to speak at the international Congress of Women,held in Berlin,German.She was the only black woman at the conference.She received and enthusiastic ovation when she honored the host by delivering her address in German.She then proceeded to deliver the speech in French,and concluded with the English version.In 1909,Mary was one of two black women(Ida B.Wells was the other one) invited to sign the "Call"and to attend the first organizational meeting of the NAACP, where she became a founding member.In 1913-1914,she helped organize the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.More than a quarter century later,she helped write its creed that set up a code of conduct for black woman.In World War 1,she was involved with the War Camp Community Service which aided in recreation for and,later,the demobilization of Negro servicemen.As WW1 was winding down,Mary and her daughter Phyllis joined Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, of the Congressional Union of Women Suffrage movement,which enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.Active in the Republican Party,she was president of the women's Republican League during Warren G. Harding's 1920 presidential campaign and the first election in which all American women were given the right to vote.In the former Confederacy,Southern states had earlier passed voter registration and election rules that still effectively disfranchised most blacks.She wrote her autobiography,a colored Woman in a White World (1940).In 1950 Mary started what would be a successful fight to integrate eating places in the District of Columbia.In the 1890s the District of Columbia had formalized segregation as did states in the South.Before then,local integration laws dating to the 1870s had required all eating-places proprietors "to serve any respectable,well-behaved person regardless of color,or face $1,000 fine and forfeiture of their license."In 1949, Dr.Terrell and colleagues Clark F. King,Essie Thompson,Arthur F. Elmer entered the segregated Thompson Restaurant.When refused service,they promptly field a lawsuit.Attorney Ringgold Hart argued,on April 1,1950,that the District laws were unconstitutional and later won the case against restaurants segregation.In the three years pending a decision in District of Columbia v.John R. Thompson Co.,Mary targeted other restaurants.Her tactics included boycotts,picketing,and sit-ins.Finally on June 8, 1953,the court ruled that segregated eating places in Washington,DC,were unconstitutional.After the age og 80, Mary continued to participate in picket lines,protesting the segregation of restaurants and theaters.During her seniors years, Mary also succeeded in persuading the local chapter of the American Association of University Women to admit blacks.She lived to see the supreme court's decision of Brown v.Board of education,holding unconstitutional the segregation of schools by race.Mary died two months later at the age of 90,in Ann Arundel General Hospital.It was the week before the NACW was to hold its annual meeting,that year at her town of Annapolis Maryland.