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Mary Church Terrell Biography

Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell (September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954) was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and became known as a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street school (now known as Paul Laurence Dunbar High School)—the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1896, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1894). She also helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she also was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1910).

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Mary Church Terrell Quotes

. . . some people cannot bear the truth, no matter how tactfully it is told. No doubt the haughty, the tyrannical, the unmerciful, the impure and the fomentors of discord take a fierce exception to the Sermon on the Mount.

Discord, Doubt, Fierce, Matter, People

I cannot help wondering sometimes what I might have become and might have done if I had lived in a country which had not circumscribed and handicapped me on account of my race, that had allowed me to reach any height I was able to attain.

Allowed, Country, Done, Lived, Race

Please stop using the word "Negro. ". . . We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.

Colored, Names, People, Race, Using, Word

Stop using the word 'Negro. ' The word is a misnomer from every point of view. It does not represent a country or anything else. . . I am an African-American.

African American, Country, Negro, Represent, Stop, Views

As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night, stranger in a strange land, and walk miles without finding a place to lay my head

Finding, Land, Might, Miles, Night

A white woman has only one handicap to overcome - that of sex. I have two - both sex and race. . . . Colored men have only one - that of race. Colored women are the only group in this country who have two heavy handicaps to overcome, that of race as well as that of sex.

Country, Group, Men, Sex, White

To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth.

Effort, Incentives, Ruin, Shadow, Wreck

Seeing their children touched and seared and wounded by race prejudice is one of the heaviest crosses which colored women have to bear.

Children, Prejudice, Race, Touched, Women

The elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens. . . because the word 'people,' by an unparalleled exhibition of lexicon graphical 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.

Elective, Girl, Graphical, Mean, Twisted, Wise

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.

Ere, Glorious, Hoping, Long, Onward And Upward, Struggle

Surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep.

Believe, Color, Flag, Government, Hideous

It is only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great.

Become, Good, Home, People

Nobody wants to know a colored woman's opinion about her own status of that of her group. When she dares express it, no matter how mild or tactful it may be, it is called 'propaganda,' or is labeled 'controversial. ' Those two words have come to have a very ominous sound to me.

Black, Controversial, Dares, Nobody, Sound, Two

While most girls run away from home to marry, I ran away to teach.

Girl, Girls, Home, Ran, Running

No one color can describe the various and varied complexions in our group. They range from the deep black to the fairest white with all the colors of the rainbow thrown in for good measure. When twenty or thirty of us meet, it is as hard to find three or four with the same complexion as it would be catch greased lightning in a bottle.

Bottle, Color, Greased, Rainbow, Thirty, White

. . . no young colored person in the United States today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration that members of his race have accomplished so little, he is discouraged from attempting anything himself. For there is scarcely a field of human endeavor which colored people have been allowed to enter in which there is not at least one worthy representative.

Ambition, Field, People, Race, Truthfully, Worthy

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 to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

Born, Buds, Lifting, Past, Responsibility, Struggle