Terrell, Mary Church, 1863-1954

Mary Church Terrell September 23, 1863, Memphis, Tennessee – July 24, 1954, Annapolis, Maryland; parents Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers, both freed slaves of mixed racial ancestry; Mary Church, known to members of her family as "Mollie," and a brother were born during their father's first marriage, which ended in divorce. Their half-siblings, Robert, Jr. and Annette, were born to Robert Sr.'s second wife, Anna Wright. Robert Church later married a third time; Mary Church later majored in Classics at Oberlin College—which was the first college in the United States to accept African American and female students. She was one of the first African American women to attend the institution. The freshman class nominated her as class poet, and she was elected to two of the college's literary societies. She also served as an editor of The Oberlin Review. Terrell earned her bachelor's degree in 1884 alongside notable African-American intellectuals Anna Julia Cooper and Ida Gibbs Hunt. Together, these three Oberlin graduates grew to become lifelong colleagues and high regarded activists in the movement towards racial and gender equality in the United States. Continuing her studies at Oberlin, Terrell earned her master's degree in Education four years later; Church started her career in Education teaching at Wilberforce College; moved to Washington, D.C. to accept a position in the Latin Department at the M. Street School. After teaching for a time, Church studied in Europe for two years; October 18, 1891, in Memphis, Church married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who became the first black municipal court judge in Washington, DC; Had 4 children, only one survived to adulthood, daughter Phyllis and later adopted another daughter; active in the happenings within suffragists circles in the National Association Woman Suffrage Association. It was through these meetings that Mary Terrell became associated with Susan B. Anthony; Active in the Republican Party, she was president of the Women's Republican League during Warren G. Harding's 1920 presidential campaign; In 1892, Mary Terrell formed the Colored Women's League to aid in elevating the lives of educated black women outside of a church setting; with Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin formed the National Association of Colored Women; 1896, Terrell became the first president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women; She also had a prosperous career as a journalist (she identified as a writer). Using the pen name "Euphemia Kirk," she published in both the black and white press to promote the African American Women's Club Movement; wrote for a variety of newspapers: A.M.E. Church Review of Philadelphia, PA, Southern Workman Hampton, VA, Indianapolis Freeman, the Afro-American of Baltimore, the Washington Tribune, the Chicago Defender, the New York Age, the Voice of the Negro, the Women's World, and the Norfolk Journal and Guide, Washington Evening Star, and the Washington Post; met activist Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington; In 1909, Terrell was one of two black women (journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the other) invited to sign the "Call" and to attend the first organizational meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), becoming a founding member. In 1913–14, she helped organize the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. More than a quarter-century later, she helped write its creed that set up a code of conduct for black women; In World War I (WWI), Terrell was involved with the War Camp Community Service, which supported recreation for servicemen; Terrell and her daughter Phyllis joined Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CUWS); president of the Women's Republican League during Warren G. Harding's 1920 presidential campaign; Terrell wrote an autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940);