Mary Eliza Church Terrell was a well-known African American activist who championed racial equality and women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century. An Oberlin College graduate and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree in America, she earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Terrell was part of the upper class, her father being one of the first African American millionaires in the southern states, who used their position to fight racial discrimination. Her activism was sparked in 1892, when an old friend, Thomas Moss, was lynched in Memphis. Terrell joined Ida B. Wells-Barnett in anti-lynching campaigns. Her words—“Lifting as we climb”—became the motto of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the group she helped found in 1896. She was NACW president from 1896 to 1901. She also actively embraced women’s suffrage, which she saw as essential to elevating the status of black women. Terrell fought for woman suffrage and civil rights because she realized that she belonged “to the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount…both sex and race.
In 1909, Terrell was among the founders and charter members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Then in 1910, she co-founded the College Alumnae Club, later renamed the National Association of University Women. Following the passage of the 19th amendment, Terrell focused on broader civil rights. In 1948, Terrell became the first black member of the American Association of University Women, after winning an anti-discrimination lawsuit. In 1950, at age 86, she challenged segregation in public places by protesting the John R. Thompson Restaurant in Washington, DC. She was victorious when, in 1953, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated eating facilities were unconstitutional, a major breakthrough in the civil rights movement.
Terrell continued to be active in the happenings within suffragist circles in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Through these meetings she became associated with Susan B. Anthony. n 1913, Alice Paul organized a NAWSA suffrage rally where she initially planned to exclude black suffragists and later relegated them to the back of the parade in order to curry favor with Southern white women. However, Terrell and Ida B. Wells fought to integrate the march. Terrell marched with the delegation from new York City, while the Delta Sigma Theta sorority women of Howard University, whom Terrell mentored, marched with the other college women. Active in the Republican Party, she was appointed director of Work among Colored Women of the East by the Republican National Committee for Warren G. Harding's 1920 presidential campaign during the first election in which American women won the right to vote.
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 Black woman in the United States to hold such a position."Lynching from a Negro's Point of View," published in 1904, is included in Terrell's long list of published work. In 1904, Terrell was invited to speak at the International Congress of Women, held in Berlin, Germany. She was the only black woman at the conference. She received an enthusiastic ovation when she honored the host nation by delivering her address in German. She delivered the speech in French, and concluded with the English version.
