Mary Church Terrell
From Social Justice Wiki
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was the daughter of the South's first African American millionaire and could chosen to lead a life of a lady of great privilege, as her father urged. Terrel took a diffent course, and upon graduating from Oberlin in 1884, became an educator. She retired from her Washington, D.C. teaching post upon marrying Robert Terrell in 1891. She soon utilized her talents to "enfrachise her sex" and "emancipate her race". In 1896 she became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and by the early 1900s was deeply immersed in a host of efforts to improve the lot of African Americans, advocating for Civil Rights and equal opportunites. Included in those efforts was her involvement in the founding of the NAACP. Terrell dedicated her whole life to enacting positive change within the community, even up until her eighties, where she obtained monumental victories in the fight for lunch counter desegregation. Today she is remembered as an educator, a writer, an orator, and a leader in the struggle against lynching and segregation and a pioneer in the movement for Womens' Rights. Check out this great website for more information on her life.
Created By: Hank Gonzalez, Rabia Mir, Kwame Owusu-Kesse, Lisa Gordon