08/15/2020
Mary Church Terrell was an African American activist who fought for racial equality & women’s suffrage. She was President of the National Association of Colored Women & on February 1898, spoke at the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C. Mary Church Terrell represented intersectional feminism at its best. She was the daughter of former slaves in Memphis, TN. Her father was one of the South’s first African American Millionaires. Her mom owned and operated a hair salon. She was an Oberlin College graduate. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Her activism was engaged after an old friend was lynched because his business was competed with a white man. She joined Ida B Wells-Barnett in the anti-lynching campaign’s and she focused her life around racial uplifting. It was her spoken words: “Lifting as we climb” became the motto of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the group she helped found in 1896. She was NACW president from 1896 to 1901. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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She actively fought for woman suffrage and civil rights because she realized that she belonged “to the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount…both s*x and race.” She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and in 1910 co-founded the College Alumnae Club, later renamed to the National Association of University Women. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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After the passage of the 19th amendment in Aug 1920, she focused on civil rights for all. She became the first black member of the American Association of University Women after winning a discrimination lawsuit and in 1950, she challenged segregation in public spaces with a protest at John R Thompson’s restaurant in Washington DC & in 1953, the a supreme a court ruled that eating facilities being segregated were unconstitutional. This was a huge breakthrough in the civil rights movement. Mary Church Terrell passed away four years later.
