Mary Church Terrell: Activist for Women’s Rights
...eading meeting place for black organizations and was, at the time, the largest theater for blacks in the United States. He also developed an amusement park on Beale Street in 1899 that became the black recreation center, and in the 1906 opened the city’s first and only at a time black bank. By the turn of the century he was without a doubt the richest black man in Memphis and was touted as the first black millionaire in the South. Mary’s mother was also born a slave. Louisa had been taken from her mother as a child and became a close companion of her white mistress and later joined the Episcopal Church. She passed for white as a Creole in New Orleans for years. Later, she became the first black woman to operate a successful hair salon in Memphis. 2 Mary’s Grandmother, Eliza was very religious and attended the Baptist Church regularly. Louis and Robert Church reared Mollie, as Mary was called in a sheltered middle-class environment. In 1869, when she was six, her parents separated and later divorced. Mollie’ mother sold her shop in Memphis and moved to New York. She enrolled her daughter in an integrated “model school” in Yellow Springs, Ohio rather than the segregated school of New York. This transition was traumatic for Mollie, as she had been sheltered from racism much of her life thus far. She began to understand that her race rendered her inferior in the eyes of her white counterparts. Her wealth did not stop her from feeling the full effects of racism. 3 It was here that she realized that she came from emancipated slaves and it became a source of strength for her. She theorized the that “no race had lived upon the face of the earth which has not at some time in its history been the subject of a stronger. Holding human beings in slavery seems to have been part of the divine plan to bring out the best in them.” 4 She wanted to show her white counterparts who had been free all their life that she was indeed their equal. Subsequently, she attended public schools in Ohio, Oberlin Academy, and enrolled in the four-year "Classical" or "Gentleman's Course" at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, being graduated in 1884. Mary completed her education by spending two years in Europe, studying French, German, and Italian languages. In 1891, Oberlin College offered her the position of registrar of the school, including faculty position, but she declined the offer because of her forthcoming marriage. Married women were not supposed to teach. During its centennial celebration in 1933, Oberlin recognized her as one of its one hundred outstanding alumni. In 1948, Oberlin conferred upon her the honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. After being graduated from college, Mary returned to Memphis and lived for a year with her father, who discouraged her interest in teaching there. He did not object when she accepted a position as a member of the faculty of Wilberforce University at Xenia, Ohio. She left Wilberforce to accept a teaching position at the M Street High School in Washington, D. C., where she met her future husband. On October 18, 1891, in Memphis, Mary married Robert Heberton Terrell (1857-1925) at the family home, 384 South Lauderdale Street, where the ceremony and reception took place. Robert Terrell was a graduate of Groton Academy, Groton, Massachusetts, and a magna cum laude graduate in the class of 1884 of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was graduated as valedictorian of his 1889 class at Howard University Law School in Washington, D. C., and received a master's degree in law from Howard in 1893. Terrell taught at the M Street High School in Washington, and later practiced law with John R. Lynch, a former member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Mississippi. He practiced law until he received four successive four-year Presidential appointments as judge of the Municipal Court of the District of Columbia, where he remained until ill health forced him to retire. After her marriage, Mary Church Terrell made her home in Washington and maintained a summer home at Highland Beach, Maryland, which she built next to the home of Frederick Douglass. She became active in the feminist movement, founding a women's club, the Colored Woman's League, in Washington in 1892. This organization merged with the National Federation of Afro-American Women in 1896 and adopted the name National Federation of Colored Women. Mary Church Terrell was elected the first president. She was a popular speaker and lecturer and wrote many articles denouncing segregation. Her appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education in 1895 was a first in America for a woman of color. She resigned in ...