Mary Church Terrell

Mary "Mollie" Eliza Church Terrell (born Mary Church; September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, teacher, and suffragist. She was one of the first African American women to earn a college degree.

Terrell taught in Washington, D.C., in the Latin Department at the M Street School, now known as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, the nation's first African American public high school in the nation. From 1895 to 1906, she served on the District of Columbia school board; she was the first African-American woman to be appointed to the school board of a major city. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1892). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1923).

Early life and education

Mary Church was born September 23, 1863, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayres, both freed slaves of mixed racial ancestry They were the offspring of enslaved women and white slave owners: Robert's father and maternal grandfather and Louisa's father. Her parents were freed at the end of the Civil War.

After the Civil War, Louisa opened a store selling wigs and hair extensions, which gave the family financial security. Robert opened a saloon; when he was denied a license due to his race, he successfully sued the State of Tennessee for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1866. After the Memphis massacre of 1866 and yellow fever epidemic of 1878, he bought property around Beale Street becoming one of the first black millionaires in the American South and an influential member of the Republican party. In the midst of national adversity, the Terrell family became a part of a rising upper class in the United States.

Robert and Louisa divorced in 1874, and Louisa moved from Memphis to New York City. Mary Church and her little brother lived with their mother after the divorce. The court's ruling was likely influenced by Robert's public violence, the fact that he operated a tavern, and Louisa's evidence about his temper at home. Mary Church's father was married three times. His first marriage was to Margaret Pico Church from 1857 to 1862, with whom he had a daughter named Laura. Robert then married Louisa Ayers in 1862. Mary and her brother Thomas Ayres Church (1867–1937) were both products of this marriage. Their half-siblings, Robert, Jr. (1885–1952) and Annette (1887–1975), were born to Robert Sr.'s third wife, Anna Wright.

In 1871, when Mary Church was 8 years old, her parents sent her to Antioch College's Model School in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and hired a tutor to teach her German. In 1875, her parents moved her to Oberlin, Ohio, where she attended Oberlin public school from eighth grade through high school. She graduated in 1879, when she was 15. Church then attended Oberlin College. Earning her degree made her among the earliest African American women to earn a college degree. Terrell's class position and ability to earn a degree gave her the ability to fight against racial discrimination, giving a voice to the voiceless. She enrolled in the four-year "gentleman's course" instead of the expected two-year ladies' course, despite being warned that the course was difficult and that being overeducated would make it hard to find a husband. In the gentleman's course, she learned Latin and Greek. At Oberlin, Church was elected freshman-class poet, edited the college newspaper, and participated in the Aeolian women's club. While most of her classmates were white and she experienced occasional racial discrimination, she considered herself popular and felt her high social class carried more weight than her race. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1884, graduating alongside Anna J. Cooper and Ida Gibbs Hunt; the three activists would become lifelong colleagues. In 1888, she earned a Master of Arts. She also studied abroad in Europe for two years.

Career

Mary Church began her career in education in 1885, teaching modern languages at Wilberforce University. After two years of teaching in Ohio, she moved to Washington, D.C., to teach Latin at M Street High School. She took a leave of absence from teaching in 1888 to travel and study in Europe for two years, where in Italy, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland she became fluent in French, German, and Italian. In 1881, Oberlin College offered her a registrarship position, which would have made her the first African-American women with such position, but she declined. When she married Robert "Berto" Heberton Terrell in 1891, she was forced to resign from her position at the M Street School where her husband also taught. In 1895, she was appointed superintendent by the Washington, D.C. school board—the first woman to hold the post.

Upon returning to the United States, Church shifted her attention from teaching to social activism, focusing especially on the empowerment of African-American women and ironically having to fight Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on their views of non-white women's suffrage. She also wrote prolifically, including an autobiography, and her writing was published in several journals. "Lynching from a Negro's Point of View," published in 1904, is included in Terrell's long list of published work where she attempts to dismantle the skewed narrative of why Black men are targeted for lynching and she presents numerous facts to support her claims.

Terrell's autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940), recounts her personal experiences with racism. Terrell began writing in 1925, which she self-published 15 years later at the age of 78.

Activism

Black women's clubs and the National Association of Colored Women

In 1892, Terrell, along with Helen Appo Cook, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna J. Cooper, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Mary Jane Patterson and Evelyn Shaw, formed the Colored Women's League in Washington, D.C. The goals of the service-oriented club were to promote unity, social progress, and the best interests of the African American community. Cook was elected president. The Colored Women's League aided in elevating the lives of educated African-American women. It also started a training program and kindergarten, before these were included in the Washington, DC public schools. Combined with her achievements as a principal, the success of the League's educational initiatives led to Terrell's appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education which she held from 1895 to 1906. She was the first African-American woman to hold such a position.

Around the same time, another group of progressive African-American women were gathering in Boston, Massachusetts under the direction of suffragist and intellectual Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin under the name Federation of Afro-American Women. As both organizations had similar ambitions and audiences, they combined their efforts with hundreds of other organizations to reach a wider focus of African-American women workers, students and activists nearing the beginning of the 20th century. Out of this union formed the National Association of Colored Women, which became the first secular national organization dedicated to the livelihoods of African-American women. Black women from the middle class and upper class felt it was their duty to demonstrate what black women could be, do, and accomplish in the early 1890s. With Mary Church Terrell serving as its first president, they established the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 in the hopes of gaining a national voice to advance the welfare of all African Americans. The NACW's motto was "Lifting as we climb" and they aimed to create solidarity among Black women while combating racial discrimination. Among other initiatives, members created day nurseries and kindergartens for Black children. Terrell was twice elected president, serving from 1896 to 1901. After declining a third re-election, she was named honorary president of the Association.

In 1910, Terrell founded the College Alumnae Club, which later became the National Association of University Women (NAUW). The League started a training program and kindergarten before being included in the Washington, DC public school system.