Mary Church Terrell: This Week In African American History - July 21, 2008
On this day in 1954 our community lost one of it’s great leaders in Mary Church Terrell. Being the daughter of the South’s first African American millionaire, Mrs. Terrell could have walked a different path and enjoyed a life of luxury. Instead she was a powerful educator, civil rights leader, 1st president of the National Association of Colored Women, involved in the founding of the NAACP, 1st Black to serve on the District of Columbia Board of Education, founded the Colored Women’s League, neighbor of Frederick Douglass, wrote the Delta Oath, was a distinguished honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at Howard University, Magnum Cum Laude graduate of Oberlin College in 1884, and delegate for colored women at the International Congress of Women in Berlin in 1904. Below you will find some photos of this American legend and African American Icon.
“A white woman has only one handicap to overcome - a great one, true, her sex.
A colored woman faces two—her sex and her race.”
