A Pioneer of Democracy....Mary Church Terrell [1863-1954]

"THANKS TO HER LONG PRODUCTIVE LIFE of teaching, learning and organizing, Mary Church Terrell played a crucial role in helping this nation develop into a world power. Like MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE and IDA B. WELLS BARNETT, Mary Church was the descendent of slaves. Determine to make the best of her parents’ legacy, she began a long, proud tradition in which first-generation freedwomen devoted their lives to uplifting ALL BLACK AMERICANS.

In the late eighteen nineties, as a fresh-faced idealist from a Deep South homestead, Mary added her insights and knack for organizing to the growing suffragist movement. In addition to arguing boldly against Plessy vs Ferguson, the landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the racially discriminatory separate-but-equal rule, Mary was a key member of a coalition that helped secure voting rights for women.

Like SOJOURNER TRUTH and HARRIET TUBMAN before her, Mary Church Terrell participated in a grassroots political organizing that overlapped considerably with the growing feminist and suffrage movements of the twentieth century. In small villages in Ohio and upstate New York, in Pennsylvania and Maryland and Massachusetts, abolitionists and suffragists had long crossed paths in their respective quests for freedom. For Mary, teaching would set her on a path to history, and her perseverance in poorly funded segregated public schools in the nation’s capital remain a formidable example of dedication to overcoming immense obstacles. Mary was a well-bred intellectual with a big heart and an impressive sense of dignity. In an eventful life spent fighting for economic justice and educational opportunity on behalf of millions of black Americans, those attributes proved more than handy for Mary Church Terrell.

Mary Church was born in 1863, the year Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the document that broke the bonds of thousands of slaves. The Civil War, with its hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded and an uncounted number of displaced citizens, left a horrendous scar on the Southern landscape and the American consciousness. Mary never forgot the COURAGE and BLOODSHED it required to bring an end to slavery in America. ‘If it had not been for the victory of the Union Army,’ Mary wrote in 1888, I would be on some plantation in the South, manacled soul and body in the fetters of a slave...’

Seeking new opportunities and a safe environment for their bright daughter, [Mary’s parents] Robert and Louisa sent Mary north for her education to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she attended public schools...Mary excelled....she received both an undergraduate and an advanced degree and decided to become a teacher...at Wilberforce University. Thereafter, Mary began a long climb to the top of the nation’s growing community of dedicated black educators...Mary grew frustrated by the LACK OF FUNDING for her eager but needy young pupils. Realizing that black Americans were required to improve themselves without the benefits of a government they helped support planted the seed of activism within her. She resolved then to 'keep on moving, keep on insisting, keep on fighting injustices,' Mary told an interviewer in 1938.

When in 1896, the Supreme Court voted to UPHOLD a controversial law that allowed 'separate but equal' public facilities for the blacks and whites, Mary grew even more determined to right the inequitable distribution of political and social power in America. She helped found the National Association of Colored Women, a group related to the National Federation of Afro-African Women and to the Colored Women’s League. The early nineteen hundreds were a remarkable time for women activists both black and white. Mary’s involvement in the historic Niagara Movement as well as with the powerful women’s organizations would facilitate two major developments in twentieth-century American history: the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which at long last guaranteed FULL VOTING rights for women. Gaining voting rights for women was a triumphant moment for Mary. She had passionately advocated woman’s suffrage in years of lecturing and writing: ‘If we fight, we get our rights,’ Mary wrote confidently in 1910. ‘We’re second class citizens because we SIT idly by.’

By the twenties Mary was a force to be reckoned with on the issue of public education. She had married a promising lawyer, Robert Herberton Terrell, in 1891. Together, they made a dynamic pair, and Robert Terrell earned a reputation as a hardworking, intelligent judge. In his later years, he became one of the first African Americans to serve as a municipal court judge in Washington, D.C.

Mary continued to seek better schools for black students in the nation’s capital and around the United States. As testament to the trust and respect accorded mary by her colleagues, she was appointed to the board of education in Washington, D.C. in 1895, the FIRST African American EVER named to that august board... She took her responsibilities extremely seriously and was outspoken about the disparities that existed in America. She railed against the dominant press for its insensitive inaccurate and damaging coverage of African Americans: ‘There is a Conspiracy of Silence in the American press so far as the colored American side of the story, ‘ Mary wrote in 1907. ‘Anybody who makes him ridiculous and criminal can get a hearing, but his struggles and heartaches are tabooed.’

Indeed, Mary would spend the rest of her life writing, organizing, and working as an educator... She cofounded a District of Columbia task force to eradicate racial discrimination and become friend and mentor to many political and social activists including Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and the great union organizer A. Phillip Randolph.

A few months before her death, in 1954, the Supreme Court had handed down another landmark decision involving racial discrimination. Known as Brown vs. Board of Education, the decision effectively did away with the separate but equal doctrine that had originally set young Mary Church on the path of activism so many years earlier.

It was full circle, one that Mary fortunately was able to see come to a close before her life ended. And she remarked in 1920, the success of America will continue to depend on the legacy we leave for our children-and on how well we prepare to lead: “Students in our colleges and universities can do much to eradicate prejudice by starting a CRUSADE which has for its slogan, ‘Down with discrimination against human beings on account on race, color, sex or creed.’”

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Excerpts from “Fifty Black Women Who Changed America”

Alexander, Amy “Fifty Black Women Who Changed America” New Jersey: Birch Lane Press, 1999:35