Mary Eliza Church Terrell is considered a living connection between the age of the Declaration and the modern civil rights movement.  She was born in Memphis in 1863 and was active until her death in 1954. Terrell was the first chairman of the Colored Women’s National Association (NACW) which was established in 1896. Terrell makes a stirring plea for unity, activism, and race pride for her first presidential address to the NACW, given in Nashville on September 15, 1897. The following is the speech, written in 1990 in the Library of Congress from its original manuscript: “In Union there is

The same year the Declaration of Emancipation was signed; Mary Church Terrell was born and died two months after the decision of  Brown v. Education Board. During those 90 years, she promoted racial and economic diversity,  especially African-American women’s rights and opportunities. 9 Best Mary Church Terrell Quotes 1-         “And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ‘ere long. With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue

The Mary Church Terrell House is a renowned house at 326 T Street NW in Washington, D.C. The birthplace of noted civil rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell, the suffragist and educator, who served as the first President of the Colored Women’s National Association. Her home in the LeDroit Park section of Washington, DC was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975. The house is a contributing property in the LeDroit Park Historic District. Terrell House sits between 3rd and 4th Street on the south side of T Street, southeast of Howard University. It’s a 2-1/2 story brick building with a

Mary Church was one of the first Black women in the United States to receive a college degree, graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor’s degree in classics and master’s degree four years later in 1888. In 1892, Terrell was elected president of the famous Washington, D.C. Black discussion group “Bethel Literary and Historical Society,” the first woman to hold the position. In 1913 Terrell joined the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, which had recently been formed, at Howard University. She was given a degree from Oberlin College in 1948, and an Honorary Degree from Howard and the Universities of Wilberforce.