Mary Church Terrell was born September 23, 1863 in Memphis
Tennessee. Her father was a former slave
who opened a saloon after her was freed by his master, who was also his
father. During the yellow fever epidemic
of 1878-79 he invested all his money in real estate as people fled the city
becoming the South’s first black millionaire.
When she was six her parents divorced and she was sent to board with a
family in Ohio.
She attended Oberlin College majoring in the classics. She took the four year curriculum of men’s
courses rather than the suggested two year “ladies’ curriculum. She received her bachelor’s degree in 1884;
one of the first African American women awarded a college degree. She then studied in Europe for two years
becoming fluent in French, German and Italian.
In 1891 she married Robert Heberton Terrell one of the first
black graduates of Harvard. They settled in Washington D.C. where she began a
long and illustrious career in community service; as high school teacher and
principal for eleven years served on the District of Columbia Board of
Education, the first black women to hold such a position. Mary was also president for life of the
National Association of Colored Women. She joined the suffragist cause and
lectured at the 1898 convention of the National American Woman Suffrage
Association. Beginning in the 1920’s
Mary served as an advisor to the Republican National Committee, assisting black
women with their newly won right to vote.
She had a thirty year career as lecturer on such topics as
racial injustice, black history and culture, and the black woman’s advancement
since Emancipation. She wrote for
newspapers and magazines, resulting with the publication in 1940 of her
autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White
World.
At the age of eighty seven Mary staged a sit in at a
Washington restaurant in an attempt at desegregation. Her efforts failed, so she sued and took her
case all the way to the Supreme Court, where she was victorious.
