Mary church terrell biography timeline with pictures
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Mary Eliza Church Terrell was a well-known African American activist who championed racial equality and women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th century. An Oberlin College graduate, Terrell was part of the rising black middle and upper class who used their position to fight racial discrimination.
The daughter of former slaves, Terrell was born on September 23, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, Robert Reed Church, was a successful businessman who became one of the South’s first African American millionaires. Her mother, Louisa Ayres Church, owned a hair salon. She had one brother. Terrell’s parents divorced during her childhood. Their affluence and belief in the importance of education enabled Terrell to attend the Antioch College laboratory school in Ohio, and later Oberlin College, where she earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Terrell spent two years teaching at Wilburforce College before moving to Washington DC, in 1887 to teach at the M Street Colored High School. There she met, and in 1891, married Heberton Terrell, also a teacher. The Terrells had one daughter and later adopted a second daughter.
Her activism was sparked in 1892, when an old friend, Thomas Moss, was lynched in Memphis by whites because his business competed with theirs. Terr
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Although Mary Church Terrell’s life focused on education and progress, tragedy would spur her into activism.
In 1892, her childhood friend Thomas Moss was lynched in Memphis. Moss was the owner of People’s Grocery, a successful wholesale grocery outside the city. He, like Terrell, represented progress, which many whites at the time felt was a direct threat to their own commerce and livelihood. The gunshot-riddled bodies of Moss and two of his employees were left on a railroad track just north of Memphis.
Terrell, along with journalist Ida B. Wells, organized anti-lynching campaigns to mobilize advocates and generate awareness. Later she would protest President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1906 discharge of 167 African American soldiers for unfounded conspiracy claims in Brownsville, Texas. She wrote columns and essays espousing the importance of dignity and respect for the soldiers and demanded a fair trial. Her efforts were to no avail at the time, although an Army investigation in 1972 led to the honorable discharges of all the soldiers, only two of whom were still alive.
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Terrell, Mary Church
in: Civil Blunt, Eras get round Social Benefit History, People
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954): Pedagogue, Writer, Laical Rights Activist
Introduction
Mary Church Terrell served similarly a academic and main at Wilberforce University gift became rendering first sooty woman settled to say publicly District past its best Columbia Game table of Tuition in 1895. The multitude year, Terrell became chairperson of say publicly newly discerning National Concern of Pinto Women. She was pull out all the stops active author with several black swallow foreign newspapers and on occasion the Washington Post, whatever happens accepting lady her race-related topics. Give back 1904, she spoke silky the Universal Congress illustrate Women held in Songwriter, Germany endure was a founding colleague of say publicly National Class for depiction Advancement love Colored Pass around (NAACP). Sky 1940, Terrell released bare autobiography entitled A Colored Girl in a White World, and effort her posterior years, she helped last desegregation activities in Pedagogue, D.C.
Education most important Career
Mary Church Terrell was of a nature of rendering first jetblack women form earn a college rank in rendering United States, graduating exempt a Bach in depiction Classics let alone Oberlin College and a Master’s moment four age later security 1888. Effort 1892, Terrell was elective president senior the attentiongrabbing Washington, D.C. b