Mary Church Terrell

Biography

Mary Church Terrell was a writer, educator and activist for civil rights and women's suffrage. 

Terrell was born on September 23, 1863, in Memphis, Tennessee. Her parents, both former slaves, were small business owners, and her father was the South's first African American millionaire. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1884 with a Bachelor of Arts in classical languages and earned a master's degree in education from Oberlin in 1888. 

After earning her bachelor's degree, Terrell taught at Wilberforce College (Ohio) and then at the M Street Colored High School in Washington, D.C. She resigned from her teaching post in 1891 to marry Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who became the first Black municipal court judge in Washington, D.C. 

After learning of the lynching death of a close friend in 1892, Terrell and Frederick Douglass unsuccessfully appealed to President Benjamin Harrison to publicly condemn lynching. That same year, she formed the Colored Women’s League in Washington. In 1896, she co-founded the National Association of Colored Women, becoming its first president. Terrell was also the first African American woman in the United States to be appointed to a school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia from 1896-1906. 

By 1901, Terrell was a well-known speaker and writer and was involved in a number of civil rights and equal opportunity causes. She was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and a founding member of the National Association of College Women in 1910. She was also a leading spokesperson for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, even as segregationists tried to exclude Black women from the suffrage movement in the United States. 

After World War II, Terrell fought to end legal segregation in Washington, D.C. In 1949, after winning an anti-discrimination lawsuit, she became the first African American admitted to the American Association of University Women. 

Terrell died on July 24, 1954.

Speeches

• Testimony Before The House Judiciary Committee On the Equal Rights Amendment - March 10, 1948
• Talk Made at Unveiling of Anthony Bowen’s Picture - March 2, 1939
• Address to National Council of Negro Women - May 1, 1938
• The Scottsboro Case - Ca. 1936
• Remarks on Frederick Douglass - Feb. 4, 1934
• Solving the Colored Woman's Problem - August 30, 1933
• Speech to the Women of the Eastern Division of the Republican Party - October 1932
• Colored People and World Peace - 1932
• George Washington's Colored Soldiers - 1932
• In Defense of the Republican Ticket - 1932
• Something for Colored People to Think About - 1932
• "Crispus Attucks" and "What Countries Have Done for Emancipated Slaves" - March 3, 1930
• Taft Befriended Disgraced Troops - 1930
• Talk for Community Chest over Radio in Washington, D.C. - Jan. 26, 1929
• The [16th] Biennial of the National Association of Colored Women - 1929
• Report on Purity Conference - 1927
• What Colored Women Can and Should Do at the Polls - 1926
• Colored College Women in Politics - 1925
• The Black Mammy Monument - Feb. 10, 1923
• Remarks Made at Mass Meeting - Nov. 13, 1921
• An Appeal to Colored Women to Vote and Do their Duty in Politics - 1921
• Remarks Made in Portsmouth, Va. - Nov. 12, 1920
• Black People and Arguments by Democrats in Favor of the League of Nations - oct. 26, 1920
• Statement of the Treatment... Received at the Hands of... [a] Ticket Agent at Dover, Del. - Oct. 13, 1920
• Campaign Speech made at Newport, Rhode Island - Oct. 12, 1920
• The Progress and Problems of Colored Women - Jan. 11, 1920
• The Racial Worm Turns - Ca. 1920
• Women Suffrage and the 15th Amendment - 1915
• The Progressive Party and the Negro - 1912
• Remarks Made at the Dedication of the New Mott School - May 17, 1909
• Peonage in the United States - August 1907
• The Fifth Biennial of the National Association of Colored Women - July 8, 1907
• What It Means to be Colored in Capital of the U.S. - Oct. 10, 1906
• Difficulties of Negroes in the United States - Nov. 2, 1905
• Address Delivered at the National Council of Women Convention - April 9, 1905
• A Plea for the White South by a Colored Woman - 1905
• How, When, Why, and Where Black Becomes White - 1905
• Purity and the Negro - 1905
• A Colored Woman's Visit to the Countess of Warwick - 1904
• The Strongest for the Weakest - 1904
• Appeal for Animal Day - April 29, 1902
• The Second Convention of the National Association of Colored Women - Sept. 2, 1899
• The Duty of the National Association of Colored Women to the Race - Aug. 14-16, 1899
• The Progress of Colored Women - Feb. 18, 1898
• An If or Two - 1898
• President's First Address to the National Association of Colored Women - Sept. 15, 1897
• Introduction of Ida B. Wells - Feb. 1893
• Introducing Ida B. Wells to Deliver an Address on Lynching - ca. 1893
• An Appreciation of Frederick Douglass - Undated