Fighting For Equality
... of Colored Women (NACW) and in 1896 became the organization’s first president. The group sought to achieve educational and social reform through building kindergartens for black children and providing a child care network. Additionally, the organization enthused by Mary’s fervor aspired to end discrimination practices while adopting equal pay as another key issue (Rights). Her concern for the rights of black women permeated her every thought as evidenced by one letter to her husband, she wrote, “I really feel that I am putting the colored woman in a favorable light every time I address an audience of white people” (Sterling 134). With her fluent and conversational lectures, Church Terrell helped contribute critical awareness to the era. Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of desegregation, she lectured for more than thirty years. On February 18, 1898, Mrs. Terrell delivered a speech to the National American Women’s Suffrage Association clarifying gripping truths. In this address entitled The Progress of Colored Women she explained, “By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality, by adopting the most practical and useful means to this end, colored women have in thirty short years become a great power for good” (Terrell 3). In addition to being a popular speaker, she wrote many articles denouncing segregation and published extensively in magazines including contributing to The Journal of Negro History. As a professional lecturer and writer, Terrell took a stand against a common evil of the times – lynching. Perhaps her interest depicting the heinous injustice sparked from the lynching of her childhood friend Thomas Moss in 1892. In her article titled Lynching From A Negro’s Point Of View published in the North American Review, she discussed the error on the subject of lynching and concluded the two causes of lynching stem from abhorrence from a superior race towards a weaker people who were once held as slaves and the mayhem which comes from lawlessness (Terrell 5). Mary Church Terrell reached achievements in her life never before attained. Remarkably, she was one of the first African-American women to receive a bachelor’s degree and to complete a master’s degree during a time when society expected women to throw dinner parties and wait to marry. She held positions as both teacher and principal and was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education – the first black woman to hold such a position in the United States. Moreover, the Washington chapter of the American Association of University Women admitted her to its organization, bringing to an end a policy of excluding blacks. Indeed, writing her autobiography, A Colored Woman In A White World, proved her talents respectable. In the latter years of her life, Church Terrell fought to uphold the equality laws of Washington DC. Immersed in a host of efforts to improve racial discrimination, her greatest single moment in the fight for civil rights came in her late eighties. In 1950, the nation’s capital, the District of Columbia, excluded blacks from eating in restaurants and lunch counters. Department stores and dime stores were among the worst offenders to refuse service to people of color. Terrell along with a group of volunteers formed a committee known as the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the District of Columbia A...