Mary
Church
was
born in Memphis, Tennessee, on 23rd September,
1863. Both her parents, Robert
Church and Louisa Ayers, were both former slaves. Robert was the son
of his white master, Charles Church.
During the Memphis race riots in 1866 Mary's father was shot in the
head and left for dead. He survived the attack and eventually became
a successful businessman. He speculated in the property market and
was considered to be the wealthiest black man in the South.
Mary was an outstanding student and after graduating from Oberlin
College, Ohio, in 1884, she taught at a black secondary school in
Washington and at Wilberforce College in Ohio. Through her father,
Mary met Frederick Douglass and Booker
T. Washington. She was especially close to Douglass and worked
with him on several civil rights campaigns.
After a two year travelling and studying in
France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and England (1888-1890), Mary
returned to the United States where she married Robert
Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who was later to become the first black
municipal court judge in Washington.
In 1892 Church's friend, Tom Moss, a grocer from Memphis, was lynched
by a white mob. Church and Frederick Douglass
had a meeting with Benjamin Harrison
concerning this case but the president was unwilling to make a public
statement condemning lynching.
Church was an active member of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association and was particularly concerned
about ensuring the organization continued to fight for black women
getting the vote. With Josephine Ruffin
she formed the Federation
of Afro-American Women and in 1896 she became the first president
of the newly formed National Association of
Colored Women.
In 1904 Church was invited to speak at the Berlin International Congress
of Women. She was the only black woman at the conference and determined
to make a good impression she created a sensation when she gave her
speech in German, French and English.
During the First World War Church and her daughter,
Phillis Terrell joined Alice Paul and Lucy
Burns of the Congressional Union for Women
Suffrage (CUWS) in picketing the White
House. She was particularly upset when in one demonstration outside
of the White House, leaders of the party asked the black suffragist,
Ida Wells-Barnett, not to march with other
members. It was feared that identification with black civil rights
would lose the support of white women in the South. Despite pressure
from people like Mary White Ovington,
leaders of the CUWS refused to publicly state that she endorsed black
female suffrage.
In 1909 Church joined with Mary White Ovington
to form the National Association
for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). The first
meeting of the NAACP was held on 12th February, 1909. Early members
included Josephine Ruffin, Jane
Addams, Inez Milholland, William
Du Bois, Charles Darrow, Charles
Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens,
Ray Stannard Baker, and
Ida Wells-Barnett.
Church wrote several books including her autobiography, A
Colored Woman in a White World (1940).
In the early 1950s she was involved in the struggle against segregation
in public eating places in Washington. Mary
Church Terrell died in Annapolis on 24th July, 1954.
(1) Mary Church Terrell, Washington
Post (10th February, 1900)
The elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens,
many of whom are intelligent, cultured, and virtuous, while it is
unstintingly bestowed upon the other, some of whom are illiterate,
debauched and vicious, because the word "people", by an
unparalleled exhibition of lexicographical acrobatics, has been turned
and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have themselves
born boys instead of girls, or who took the trouble to be born white
instead of black.
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