Mary Church Terrell: 1863-1954 PDF

# Mary Church Terrell: 1863-1954 ## Lifting as we Climb, Onward and Upward We Go Mary Church had never given her skin color a thought. She knew her parents were both former slaves but she didn't realize that other people might look at her differently because of that. Until one day at school. Fro...

# Mary Church Terrell: 1863-1954 ## Lifting as we Climb, Onward and Upward We Go Mary Church had never given her skin color a thought. She knew her parents were both former slaves but she didn't realize that other people might look at her differently because of that. Until one day at school. From the age of eight years old, Mary attend a boarding school in Ohio that enrolled both white and African American children. One day, she came on a group of white girls who were bragging about their looks. One was proud of her hair, another the shape of her mouth, yet another the color of her eyes. Joining in the fun, Mary asked, "Haven't I got a pretty face too?" "You've got a pretty black face," one of the girls said, pointing at Mary and laughing. All the other girls laughed too. "For the first time in my life I realized that I was an object of ridicule on account of the color of my skin", she said. Mary used that hurt to guide her path as an adult. She had an unusual childhood for an African American girl in the South. Her father, the son of a slave and her white owner, was a freed slave. Settling in Memphis, he became a millionaire by buying a tavern and, with the profits, buying up more real estate. Much of his wealth came from buying property that was abandoned during the yellow fever outbreaks of the late 1870s. Her mother has her own business - a rare thing for a woman of any race at the time. She owned a hair salon that catered to society women. Even after her parents divorced, Mary never wanted for anything. She attended private schools and Oberlin College - she was one of the first African American women to graduate from college. She had silk dresses, a generous allowance, and took frequent vacations - she even went on a two-year European tour. She had a marriage proposal from a German baron. In 1881, she attended President James Garfield's inaugural ball as the guest of Senator Blanche Bruce, the second African American to be elected to the U.S. Senate. But all the while, she felt the pain of African Americans whose lives were nearly as bad as their lives in slavery. She believed that education and had work could change things. After college, she taught at a high school for black children in Washington, DC, where she met her husband, Robert Terrell, a Harvard-educated lawyer and later the first African American man to be named a municipal court judge. When she married, Mary was forced to stop teaching, so she threw her energies into reform causes. She helped found organizations that worked for better education, jobs, healthcare, and living conditions for African Americans - the Colored Woman's League of Washington, the National Association of Colored Women, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the College Alumnae Club, among others. During one twelve-year period, Mary was involved in twenty-nine different clubs. Suffrage was a natural concern for Mary. She met Susan B. Anthony in 1898 and began working to gain the vote for women. She was vocal about the double blow dealt African American women. "The word "people" 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," she noted wryly. Mary frequently spoke in the South, where suffrage for African American women faced fierce opposition. She was forced to ride in segregated train cars, barred from restaurants, refused hotel rooms. She feared for her life yet she carried on. "It gives me satisfaction to know that I was on the right side of the question when it was most unpopular to advocate it," she said. Even in the North, Mary faced prejudice. In 1911, lawyers prevented black and white suffragists from meeting together to hear Mary speak in the Manhattan home of social and educational reformer John Dewey. Mary was a leader within the black women's suffrage movement at a time when most white suffragists weren't willing to work with African American women. But she also managed to work within white suffragist groups, bringing African American women into the wider fight. She spoke on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and picketed the White House with the radical suffragists of the National Woman's Party "Graceful, eloquent, logical - Mrs. Terrell is one of the coming women of America" said Isabella Beecher Hooker. For her entire life, Mary worked to improve the "crushed and blighted lives" of her people. She not only lived to see women get the vote but later became a pioneer of the modern civil rights movement. In the 1950s, when she was in her eighties, she led protests against department store restaurants that barred African Americans. "And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving," she'd say. "Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance." ## Early leaders of the suffrage movement Early leaders of the suffrage movement looked pretty much alike - women who were white and wealthy. But the battle was won only after the movement was opened up to others. Mary worked tirelessly for African American suffrage and women's groups, as did Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. It was primarily through these groups that African Americans were introduced to the suffrage campaign. "Whatever is unusual is called unnatural the world over," she'd say about the vote "When the world tаkеs а stер fоrwаrd in рrоgrеss, sоmе оld custоm fаlls dеаd аt оur fееt." Harriot Stanton Blatch, the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saw the future of suffrage in working women. In 1907, she formed the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women. "It gradually borne in upon us that the enthusiasm in the suffrage movement in the future would come from the industrial women," she said. New to the job force, women were not being protected by labor laws. This became tragically clear on March 25, 191, when 146 workers at the Triangle Shirt-waist Factory in New York City died in a fire. The owners had locked the exits to keep workers - almost all women - from taking breaks. Harriot Blatch thought the woman's vote could reform cruel labor practices like these. ## Image Description The image is divided into three sections. The top section is red with a large number fifteen in a white circle. Beneath that is a block of text with the title "Mary Church Terrell," "September 23, 1863 - July 24, 1954," "Lifting as we Climb, Onward and Upward We Go." The middle section of the image contains a black and white picture of a woman with a thoughtful expression. Behind her is a bright yellow background with the phrase "When the WORLD takes a step forward in progress, some OLD custo falls Dead at OUR feet". On top of this is a book with a red background, a white spine, and a white title that reads ""A Colored woman IN A White WORLD". The bottom section of the image is a colorful drawing that depicts five people at a table. The image could also be interpreted as a collage. The image is meant to celebrate the life and work of Mary Church Terrell. The quote from her is a testament to her perseverance in the face of adversity, and the image of her seated with a thoughtful expression suggests her intellectual prowess and her dedication to social change. The book and the people at the table are symbols of her commitment to education and community engagement. The presence of "A Colored Woman in a White WORLD" suggests that the image is about the struggles for equal rights and social justice. There is also a clear indication that the image references the suffrage movement, which was a major focus of Mary Church Terrell's activism.