An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 8/16/2020
Prelude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | Email |
|---|
"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."
One of the first black women to earn a college degree in the U.S., women's suffrage activist Mary Church Terrell never stopped fighting, not even into her nineties. Born in 1863 Tennessee while the Civil War was in full fury, Terrell ultimately landed both a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from Oberlin College.
But this was just the beginning: propelled into activism after a dear friend was lynched in 1892, Terrell co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 and then turned her attention to the cause of womens' suffrage --famously picketing the Wilson White House alongside members of the newly-formed National Woman's Party. Hyper-conscious of her role ("belonging to the only group in this country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount...both sex and race"), Terrell is also listed as a charter member and co-founder of no less than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment did not signify any kind of letting up, and she vigorously challenged segregation statutes (significantly the John R. Thompson Restaurant in Washington, D.C.), living to see the Supreme Court's 1953 ruling that segregated eating facilities were unconstitutional.
Next page - Lesson 30: Edmonia Lewis