DOCSLIB.ORG

Mary Church Terrell at the Age of 86, Mary

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Mary Church Terrell at the Age of 86, Mary Mary Church Terrell At the age of 86, Mary Church Terrell led and won the struggle to desegregate Washington, D.C.’s dining establishments. In recognition of this remarkable accomplishment and the singular life that preceded it, the site of one of her greatest civil rights victories – the old Hecht’s department store and several accompanying parcels, now being developed by CarrAmerica Urban Development, LLC - is being named Terrell Place in her honor. Born in 1863 to former slaves, Mrs. Terrell could have lived a life of quiet privilege. Her father, Memphis, Tennessee’s first African-American millionaire, would have preferred it. Instead, she studied to be one of the first African-American women to receive a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in 1884. Over the next two years, she continued her education with a Grand Tour of Europe, becoming fluent in French, German and Italian. Her multilingual skills were very useful in her later work to gain international women’s suffrage. In 1891, she married Robert Terrell, with whom she had a daughter, Phyllis. Their home at 326 T Street, N.W. is recognized today on the National Trust of Historic Places. Robert was a teacher and a lawyer who later became the first African-American judge on Washington’s Municipal Court. Also a teacher, Mrs. Terrell received her master’s degree from Oberlin and three honorary doctorates during her lifetime. She was the first African-American woman to serve on a U.S. board of education, and a Washington, D.C. elementary school bears her name. She served as the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and was one of the founders of the NAACP. The earliest inspiration for her life’s work came from her father’s friend Frederick Douglass. It was through Douglass that she gained her first experience in civil rights campaigns. She wrote several books, including her 1940 autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World. By 1950, segregation was the accepted way of life in Washington, D.C. Housing, public education, health care, and the hospitality industry were divided on racial lines. But Mrs. Terrell was old enough to remember that “in the 1890s, a colored person could dine anywhere in Washington.” That was ensured by laws passed in 1872 and 1873 requiring all eating places “to serve any respectable, well-behaved person without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” These so-called “Lost Laws” were dropped when the D.C. Criminal Code was recodified. Mrs. Terrell’s fight to reinstate the Lost Laws galvanized the movement to integrate post-World War II Washington. A lawsuit to accomplish this was filed in 1950. For the next three years, Mrs. Terrell and the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of D.C. Anti -Discrimination Laws she chaired targeted other segregated restaurants through the use of boycotts and picket lines. Their most visible target was the Hecht Company department store on Seventh Street – the site for Terrell Place. They began to boycott Hecht’s segregated lunch counter with the slogan “Don’t Shop where you can’t Eat”. This was reinforced for six months with a picket line that formed every Thursday night, Friday lunch hour, and all day Saturdays. Remembering the Lost Laws’ requirement that a patron be a “well-behaved person”, Mrs. Terrell ensured this was the best-dressed picket line ever. She even arranged for newsworthy guest picketers, including her friend Josephine Baker, the world famous singer and dancer. The picketing ended when Hecht’s quietly changed their policy, a decision Mrs. Terrell acknowledged by patronizing the lunch counter with three African-American journalists. In 1953, following a judicial path marked by challenges and obstacles, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled Washington, D.C.’s segregated eating establishments to be unconstitutional. Writing for the court, Justice William O. Douglas wrote, “the acts of 1872 and 1873 survived… and remain today a part of the governing body of laws applicable to the District.” Until her death in 1954, Mrs. Terrell continued to enjoy the newly re-integrated Seventh Street corridor she helped make a reality. With the development of Terrell Place, CarrAmerica hopes to once again bring a vitality to the area worthy of her memory. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight Against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920
    UCLA UCLA Women's Law Journal Title The Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kc308xf Journal UCLA Women's Law Journal, 3(0) Author Barnard, Amii Larkin Publication Date 1993 DOI 10.5070/L331017574 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California ARTICLE THE APPLICATION OF CRITICAL RACE FEMINISM TO THE ANTI-LYNCHING MOVEMENT: BLACK WOMEN'S FIGHT AGAINST RACE AND GENDER IDEOLOGY, 1892-1920 Amii Larkin Barnard* INTRODUCTION One muffled strain in the Silent South, a jarring chord and a vague and uncomprehended cadenza has been and still is the Ne- gro. And of that muffled chord, the one mute and voiceless note has been the sadly expectant Black Woman.... [Als our Cauca- sian barristersare not to blame if they cannot quite put themselves in the dark man's place, neither should the dark man be wholly expected fully and adequately to reproduce the exact Voice of the Black Woman. I At the turn of the twentieth century, two intersecting ideolo- gies controlled the consciousness of Americans: White Supremacy and True Womanhood. 2 These cultural beliefs prescribed roles for people according to their race and gender, establishing expectations for "proper" conduct. Together, these beliefs created a climate for * J.D. 1992 Georgetown University Law Center; B.A. 1989 Tufts University. The author is currently an associate at Bowles & Verna in Walnut Creek, California. The author would like to thank Professor Wendy Williams and Professor Anthony E.
    [Show full text]
  • A Journey with Miss Ida B. Wells
    University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2018 Self-executed dramaturgy : a journey with Miss Ida B. Wells. Sidney Michelle Edwards University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, African History Commons, American Studies Commons, Fine Arts Commons, United States History Commons, and the Women's History Commons Recommended Citation Edwards, Sidney Michelle, "Self-executed dramaturgy : a journey with Miss Ida B. Wells." (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2956. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2956 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact thinkir@louisville.edu. SELF-EXECUTED DRAMATURGY: A JOURNEY WITH MISS IDA B. WELLS By Sidney Michelle Edwards B.F.A., William Peace University, 2013 A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts Department of Theatre Arts University of Louisville Louisville, KY May 2018 Copyright, 2018 by Sidney Michelle Edwards ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SELF-EXECUTED DRAMATURGY: A JOURNEY WITH MISS IDA B. WELLS By Sidney Michelle Edwards B.F.A., William Peace University, 2013 Certification Approval on April 12, 2018 By the following Thesis Committee: __________________________________ Thesis Director, Johnny Jones ___________________________________ Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • African-American Activist Mary Church Terrell and the Brownsville Disturbance Debra Newman Ham Morgan State University
    Trotter Review Volume 18 Article 5 Issue 1 Niagara, NAACP, and Now 1-1-2009 African-American Activist Mary Church Terrell and the Brownsville Disturbance Debra Newman Ham Morgan State University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Ham, Debra Newman (2009) "African-American Activist Mary Church Terrell and the Brownsville Disturbance," Trotter Review: Vol. 18: Iss. 1, Article 5. Available at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review/vol18/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the William Monroe Trotter Institute at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in Trotter Review by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact library.uasc@umb.edu. Bibliography THE TROTTER REVIEW Christian, Garna L. Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas 1899–1917. College African-American Activist Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1995. Offers a concise view of the raid and controversy and first description of the unsolved shooting of Captain Macklin at Fort Reno. Mary Church Terrell Lane, Ann J. The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction. and the Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1971. Examines the raid and aftermath in detail. Like Christian, she does not assess guilt, but criticizes Brownsville Disturbance Roosevelt for denying the soldiers due process. Tinsley, James A. “Roosevelt, Foraker, and the Brownsville Affray.” Journal of Negro History 41 (January, 1956), 43–65. Revives the controversy in a Debra Newman Ham scholarly forum after decades of neglect.
    [Show full text]
  • Douglass Day-Mary Church Terrell Curriculum
    Mary Church Terrell and Her Quest for Social Justice A Curriculum Adaptable for K-12 Conceived, written and prepared in conjunction with Frederick Douglass Day 2021 by the Colored Conventions Project Curriculum Committee 2020 Written by Denise G. Burgher with Nakisha Whittington and critical contributions from Brandi Locke, Anna Lacy, Janelle Moore-Almond and datejie green Center for Black Digital Research, #DigBlk IMAGE: Mary Church Terrell, age 89, seated in front of a bust of Frederick Douglass. Featured on the program of the National Association of Colored Women, 1962. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss425490297/ Mary Church Terrell and Her Quest for Social Justice Table of Contents Introduction . 3-4 Inquiry and Methodology. 5 Context: The Life of Mary Church Terrell (Brief Biography) . 6 Facts about Mary Eliza Church Terrell . 7 Lesson Objectives and Standards. 8 Lesson 1: Mary Church Terrell and Segregated Education . 10 Lesson 2: Mary Church Terrell from Suffrage to Voter Suppression . 14 Lesson 3: Mary Church Terrell and Politics of Black Femme Style . 17 Lesson 4: Mary Church Terrell and Black Maternal Health. 20 Lesson 5: Mary Church Terrell and State-Sanctioned Violence . 23 Lesson 6: Mary Church Terrell and Frederick Douglass . 28 Resource Links . 31-33 Teacher Evaluation of Curriculum . 34 IMAGE: Mary Church Terrell as a young woman; 1954: photos owned by her family. [No Date Recorded on Caption Card] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004677319/ Mary Church Terrell Unit: A Quest for Justice ©© 2020 Colored Conventions Project • coloredconventions.org Page 2 Introduction Welcome to the Mary Church Terrell Unit Plan! We are so glad you are taking the time to read and learn about Mary Church Terrell using this resource.
    [Show full text]
  • Sharon Harley*
    Gender Roles in Black Communities, 1880s-1930s Sharon Harley* The black community has very contradictory notions about gender roles and black women’s work, some of them quite negative. In Dust Tracks on a Road, her autobiography, Zora Neal Hurston referred to her father’s frequent boast that “he had never let his wife hit a lick of work for anybody in her life.” He also boasted that his wife had eight children.1 Three recent mega-events have drawn attention to gender attitudes in general and the black community’s attitudes in particular: the Million Man March, the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill confirmation hearings, and the Mike Tyson rape trial. In each of those cases black women were represented negatively: as, respectively, a distraction, a race traitor, and a harlot. My current manuscript, which discusses black gender norms, focuses in part on the roles of and attitudes toward wage earning women. Those three events led me to entitle the book Dignity and Damnation. “Dignity” refers to the fact that the dignity of labor was and is a core value in black communities. “Damnation” comes from the title of the article “The Damnation of Women,” by W.E.B. Du Bois.2 Zora Hurston’s father was not the only black man to boast about his wife not working. It was a common practice among working class black men in the * Associate Professor, Afro-American Studies Program, University of Maryland-College Park; former Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and Director of the Afro-American Studies Program. Co-editor, Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images; co-editor, Women in Africa and the African Diaspora.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Feminism and "Race Uplift," 1890-1900. Working Paper
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 221 445 SO 014 280 AUTHOR Perkins, Linda Marie TITLE Black Feminism and "Race Uplift," 1890-1900. Working Paper. INSTITUTION Radcliffe Coll., Cambridge, MA. Mary Ingraham Bunting Inst. SPONS AGENCY National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE 81 GRANT NIE-G-78-0236 NOTE 33p.; Far a related document, see SO 014 279. EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. 'DESCRIPTORS Black Attitudes; Black Employment; Black History; *Black Leadership; Black Organizations; *Blacks; *Females; *Racial Discrimination; *Racial Relations; Slavery; United States History; *Whites ABSTRACT In spite of lack of support from white women, educated black women concentrated their efforts on better conditions for the uneducated and the poorer among them during the late 19th century. Their primary concerns were education and employment opportunities, suffrage, the defense of black female morality, and the condemnation of lynching. The philosophy of black female leaders was that they received their education for theelevation of the race. They believed in the moral superiority of women, that the degraded state of the black race was a result of the degraded state ofits women, and that only thro.Igh the actions ofblack women would their lot improve. Few white women were supportive of.black causes. Even suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton pladed color, above principle in \an attempt to gain support of southern white women. Thus, black women either formedorganizations such as the National AssociatiOn of Colored Women or worked independently on behalf of their rade, often condemning the actions and attitudes of white women. Although the 20th century saw an increased interracial cooperation among women, distrust of white women still prevailed.
    [Show full text]
  • The Power of Motherhood: Black and White Activist Women Redefine the "Political"
    The Power of Motherhood: Black and White Activist Women Redefine the "Political" Eileen Boris t INTRODUCTION Yes, it is the great mother-heart reaching out to save her children from war, famine and pestilence; from death, degradation and de- struction, that induces her to demand 'Votes for Women,' knowing well that fundamentally it is really a campaign for 'Votes for Children.'" - [Mrs.] Carrie W. Clifford, Honorary President of the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs of Ohio, 1915. Good women try always to do good housekeeping. Building inspec- tors, sanitary inspectors and food inspectors owe their positions to politics. Who then is so well informed as to how these inspectors perform their duties as the women who live in inspected districts and in inspected houses, and who buy food from inspected markets?2 - Adella Hunt Logan of the Tuskegee Women's Club, 1912. In the early twentieth century United States, women of African descent constructed a political voice that refused to be bounded by the separation of public from private, of work from home. Just as African-American women lived lives that knew no such false divisions, so those active in national and local women's organizations drew upon their strength as t Associate Professor, Department of History, Howard University. Research for this paper was made possible by a Howard University Research Grant for the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Education. I would like to thank the participants at the Fourth Annual Conference on Feminism and Legal Theory, Adele Logan Alexander, Sharon Harley, Nelson Lichtenstein, Nancy Hewitt, and the editors of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, especially Stephanie Cotsirilos, for their comments.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Club Women and the Social Gospel
    DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 7-2015 “The least of these”: black club women and the social gospel Joseph Thomas Williams DePaul University, JWILLI68@mail.depaul.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Williams, Joseph Thomas, "“The least of these”: black club women and the social gospel" (2015). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 187. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/187 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact digitalservices@depaul.edu. “The Least of These”: Black Club Women and the Social Gospel By Joseph Thomas Williams A Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History DePaul University Chicago, IL 2015 Introduction Defined by a focus on social reform and Christian ethics, the social gospel emerged immediately after the Civil War when Christian leaders and organizations promulgated a religious ethic concerned with groups bearing low social standings, especially the working class. White male pastors led and influenced the direction of the movement, preaching against the horrible working conditions laborers in the iron and steel industries endured in the newly formed industrial America. In the late nineteenth century, the social gospel was reflected in homilies delivered by male members of the prominent Beecher family, including Henry Ward Beecher and Edward Beecher; as well as Horace Buschnell, Washington Gladden, and Samuel Harris.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Church Terrell (1863 -1965) Compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics – August 2014
    Mary Church Terrell (1863 -1965) Compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics – August 2014 Mary Eliza Church Terrell (1863 -1965) was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1863. She was the daughter of two former slaves who were prominent members of Memphis' growing black community. They provided Mary and her brother with advantages that few other African-American children of her time enjoyed. Mary received a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in Ohio. She taught languages at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio, and at a black secondary school in Washington, D.C. After a two-year tour of Europe, she completed a master's degree from Oberlin (1888) and married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who would be the first black municipal court judge in the nation's capital. An early advocate of women's rights, Terrell was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, addressing in particular the concerns of black women. In 1896 she became the first president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women, an organization which under her leadership worked to achieve educational and social reform and an end to discriminatory practices. Appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education in 1895, Terrell was the first black woman to hold such a position. An eloquent spokeswoman, adept political organizer, and prolific writer, Terrell addressed a wide range of social issues in her long career, including the Jim Crow laws, lynching, and the convict lease system. In the 1920s, Mary Church Terrell worked with the Republican National Committee on behalf of women and African Americans.
    [Show full text]
  • Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, the Famous Platformlecturer, and Member of School Board , Washington , D
    STRATEGY # 2 Text and images from Suffrage at 100: A Visual History" by Jennifer Harlan , The New York Times Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, The Famous PlatformLecturer, and Member of School Board , Washington , D. C. This noted lecturer spoke to crowdedhouses in Europe. She recently spoke inMarshall, Dallas, FortWorth Houstonand New Orleans, She has inspiredall who have heard her. She will lecture at the C. M. E. Church Tuesday night, May , at 8:30 o'clock Hear her. ADMISSION 25 CENTS . [Mary Church Terrell] , a prominent Black suffragist and the first woman appointed to the Washington D.C. Board of Education, used her gift for languages spoke at least three – to fight for the suffrage movement and for Black women's inclusion in it. Oberlin College Archives The New Times LearningNetwork STRATEGY # 2 Text and images from “ Suffrage at 100: A Visual History " by Jennifer Harlan , The New York Times A Few Leading Questions. Q. Under a representative form of Government, such as ours, should make the laws ? The people. Q. Do the people make the laws ? A. No ; one-half the people are forbidden any share in law -making. Q. Who do make the laws? A. Men. Q. Who gave men the right to make the laws ? A. Men Q. Do not the laws concern women A. They certainly do. Q. May not women take part in making the laws which they must obey ? A. They may not Men alone make the laws for women and men. Q. If a woman transgress the law, who decides the penalty, tries, convictsand punishesher Men Q.
    [Show full text]
  • April 7Th at 1 P.M
    Volume 25, Issue 3 The Leaguer April, 2021 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY lwv@lwvchautauqua.org, 679-1774 Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, PhD April 7th at 1 p.m. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89715181804?pwd=VkhFTTZ wVEt3SDNzRFNic01PWWtjdz09 Meeting ID: 897 1518 Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, PhD, is an educator, author, national and international speaker, advocate and activist. She served two terms as the fifteenth president of the League of Women Voters of the United States and chair of the League of Women Voters Education Fund (1998–2002). She is the only woman of color to have served as national president in the organization’s first one hundred years. Her career in public school and higher education spanned more than forty years. Post retirement, Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins continues to be an advocate and activist for civil rights, social justice, educational excellence, and stronger citizen participation in the electoral process for underrepresented populations. She actively serves on numerous boards and advises community-based organizations. She has received numerous awards for her contributions. In March, 2020, she received the Freedom Summer ’64 award from Miami University, Ohio for her lifetime of civil rights activism. Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her most recent book is The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters (Praeger, 2020). VOTER SERVICES 2020 Volume 25, Issue 3 Page 2 From the President In April we are going to acknowledge Black and Women’s history.
    [Show full text]
  • Long-Form Teacher's Guide for Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told By
    Long-Form Teacher’s Guide for Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told by Walter Dean Myers and illustrated by Bonnie Christensen Book Synopsis Ida B. Wells worked bravely as an activist, educator, writer, journalist, suffragist, and pioneering voice against the horrors of lynching. An inspiration for generations of civil rights crusaders, Wells' own words are used throughout this picture book biography (which is based on Ida B. Wells’ autobiography, The Crusade for Justice) to introduce young readers to this leader. Ida used fierce determination and the power of the pen to educate the world about the unequal treatment of African Americans in the United States. In this award-winning book, New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers tells the story of this legendary figure, which blends harmoniously with the historically detailed watercolor paintings of illustrator Bonnie Christensen. Historical Background Ida B. Wells’ life started in hardship, born into slavery July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi and orphaned by the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878. After the Civil War ended and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, life for thousands of former slaves was fundamentally changed, yet prejudice and violence still plagued their communities. Lynchings, unfair trials, segregation, and voter suppression only represent a fraction of the injustices faced by African American men and women in the United States during and after her lifetime. Sometime after Ida moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with her siblings she became a journalist, later co-owning and writing for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. Ida’s activism against lynching started after the lynching of her close friend Thomas Moss and his associates Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, due to the success of their grocery store, The People’s Grocery Store.
    [Show full text]