Black Women in America – Part 32
We are in our second year now telling the remarkable stories of Black Women in America. Many of these women are well-known; many have been forgotten. All of them deserve to be remembered.
Last month – Black History Month – we honored four female African American activists. The brave actions of these women were responsible for changing laws and attitudes in America to make life better for black people.
First Week: Harriet Tubman – Moses for her people (1820-1913)
Second Week: Ida B. Wells – Tireless Crusade against Lynching (1862-1931)
Third Week: Rosa Parks – Mother of the Civil Rights Movement (1913-2005)
Fourth Week: Rev. Addie Wyatt – Fighting for Justice– (1924-2012)
This month we will continue to explore the stories of those black female activists who accomplished much beginning with Mary Church Terrell – The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital (1863-1954).
Mary Church Terrell – Educator, Writer, Gender and Social Justice
I will be 90 on the 23rd of September and will die happy that children of my group will not grow up thinking they are inferior because they are deprived of rights which children of other racial groups enjoy. [1]
Mary Church Terrell
This was Mary Church Terrell’s comment after the decision was made by the Supreme Court in 1953 against the John R. Thompson restaurant for not serving black people. There was a statute in Washington D.C. that said that businesses must not refuse service based on race, but the laws were routinely ignored. Black people did not have the right to sue, so they could be refused service without consequences to the businesses. Mary sought and succeeded in getting this injustice changed.
Mary Church Terrell was born on September 23, 1863, in Memphis, Tennessee to parents who were freed from slavery. Mary had one brother. Her parents, Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers became successful businesspeople. Robert became one of the South’s first African American millionaires. Louisa Ayres Church owned a hair salon. Both parents believed in the power and efficacy of education. Mary and her brother both went to school. Mary did not waste these advantages.
Though her parents divorced, her father remained an influence and was supportive of Mary’s education. Mary lived with her mother and started to attend school in Memphis. But the schools for “colored” children[2] were poorly run so in 1871 Louisa sent Mary to Yellow Springs, Ohio for her education. Mary attended the Antioch College-associated Model School for four years. This great education would set the foundation for her life, including education, writing, and activism. Even at this school, Mary was faced with racial discrimination, but she overcame the problem with resoluteness and strength of character. An example of her valiant spirit is demonstrated by one time at school when she was first confronted with racial discrimination; “It dawned on me with terrific force that these young white girls were making fun of me, were laughing at me, because I was colored…I ran to the door, stopped, turned around, and hurled back defiantly, ‘I don’t want my face to be white like yours and look like milk. I want it nice and dark just like it is.’”[3]
This feistiness would last throughout Mary’s life. Her good education, public speaking ability, and desire to make life better for women and blacks served her well as she fought for equal rights and opportunities for all.
Mary went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Classics at Oberlin College. She was often the only woman, white or black enrolled in this field which was mostly made up of white men. She also earned a master’s degree, and by 1888 she was one of the few black women in the United States to hold both degrees. After graduating she taught at Wilberforce University for two years and later at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. This was where she met her future husband, Robert Herberton Terrell. They married in 1891. Sadly, she had trouble with her first three pregnancies and lost those children early in their marriage. They were blessed later with one surviving daughter, Phyllis, and later adopted their niece, Mary.
Other influences in Mary’s life included her lifelong friend, Frederick Douglas and W.E.B. Dubois who made Mary a charter member of his organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. She and her husband also knew Booker T. Washington, who invited Mary to his school commencement and possibly used his influence to get Robert Terrell a judgeship appointment.
She associated with Susan B. Anthony who allowed Mary to speak at suffrage meetings. Mary saw this as a way to raise the status of all women, including black women. She fought for women’s suffrage and civil rights because she belonged “to the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount…both sex and race.”
In 1892, Mary’s activism was ignited when an old friend, Thomas Moss, was lynched in Memphis by white men who did not like the business competition. Mary joined with Ida B. Wells (see our post February 14, 2923) in her anti-lynching campaigns. Both women were involved with many campaigns to help black people. Mary helped to found the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She was their president from 1896 to 1901. In 1910 she cofounded the College Alumnae Club, later renamed he National Association of University Women.
Mary was active in the suffrage movement, even picketing the White House during the Wilson administration. After the 19th amendment passed, she focused on broader civil rights issues. She had helped white women get their suffrage passed only to be disappointed with the lack of support for black women, even though “colored women need it more”. For African American women the Voting Rights Act of 1963 finally removed the barriers to voting for black women. (Mary did not live to see this; she died in 1954.)
In 1940, Mary published her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World. [4] In 1948, she became the first black member of the American Association of University Women. This was only after she won her battle against the discrimination of the AAUW who contested her membership for three years. In 1949, the national chapter agreed to accept black women, but Mary’s local chapter seceded rather than admit her.[5]
You might think a woman in her eighties would slow down, but here’s where her story gets super-exciting for me (and you, I hope!). In 1950 at the age of 86 this indomitable woman walked into a restaurant in Washington, D.C. just a few blocks from the White House and asked for service. Mary and three responsible and respectable compatriots, Reverend William Jernagin, Geneva Brown, and David Scull went to Thompson’s restaurant on January 30, 1950, and sought service.[6] They were rebuffed. The manager of Thompson’s informed them that they could not eat there because they were “colored”.
There were statutes that said that they should be served, but many businesses ignored them, mainly because black citizens were not empowered to press charges on their own. The business owners could then try and curry favor with whites by just refusing service to blacks knowing there was no “teeth” in the laws.
Then began a three-year battle in the Supreme Court for justice for black citizens. Eventually in June 1953 the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. invalidated the segregation of restaurants in the nation’s capital. This was a landmark decision and a capstone for Mary’s life.
Mary had many advantages as a black woman including influential friends and a supportive husband. She suffered from the same prejudice as other black people, yet she maintained a lifelong revulsion against injustice. She fought racism right up until her death. She died (July 24, 1954) only a few weeks after Brown v. Board of Education (May 17, 1954). Her work was pivotal in the fight for equality, giving impetus to the racial movement. Several years later Rosa Parks would refuse to go to the back of a bus (See post February 21, 2023). Within 10 years the sit-in movement would get the attention of the many remaining segregated counters in the South.
Mary deserves an important place in the history of the civil rights movement, not just for racial issues but also for gender issues. She was intelligent, kind, hardworking, and faithful. I can’t wait to meet her when I get to Heaven.
[1] Joan Quigley. Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital. (Oxford University Press, 2016) page 228.
[2] As I have mentioned in all my posts, I will use the historica references for African Americans. If nothing else, looking at how the terminology has changed shows us how far we have come in respecting black people more.
[3] Madison Good, “Mary Church Terrell”, January 5, 2022. https://www.ohiohistory.org/mary-church-terrell/
[4] Still available on Amazon and other bookseller sites.
[5] I guess white women can be just as prejudiced as white men.
[6] Joan Quigley. Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital (Oxford University Press, 2016) page 143.
