Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell was a preeminent activist and organizer who engaged with a broad range of civil rights issues, including the promotion of racial and sexual equality. Well-educated and quite world-wise, Terrell was ahead of her time in translating her unique experiences into effective activism.
Terrell attended Oberlin College, where she eventually graduated in 1888 with a Master’s degree, one of the first two Black women to do so in the US. Afterwards, she studied for two years in Europe, living in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy over the course of this period. When she returned to America, Terrell began to organize a variety of different African-American women’s clubs, beginning with the Colored Women's League, a group that provided services such as kindergarten to their communities; in 1896, this league merged with another similar group, becoming the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Her founding role in the NACW, alongside other notable organizations such as the NAACP, made her a well-known civil rights advocate in her time.
Terrell also focused much of her efforts on gaining suffrage, and improving the conditions of women after the passage of the 19th amendment. It was not uncommon for Black women to face discrimination from the NAWSA and NWP leadership, including Alice Paul, who caved to the demands of racist southern White women to keep the 1913 Suffrage Procession segregated, for example. Despite this slap in the face, Terrell continued to work with these groups for the sake of winning suffrage. Later on, during the congressional hearings on the ERA in 1945 and 1948, she represented the NACW to speak in support of the amendment. In this, as with the rest of her activism, Terrell recognized that she faced obstacles as a Black woman that neither White women nor Black men faced, a framework that would fit comfortably within the modern understanding of “intersectionality.”
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