Mary Church Terrell 1863-1954

Born in Memphis in 1863, Mary Church Terrell was noted as a champion of human rights. The daughter of millionaire Robert Church, Sr., she was graduated from Oberlin College in 1884 and later made her home in Washington, D.C. In 1904, she was a delegate to the International Council of Women in Berlin, where she was the only woman to address the group in French, German and English. A 1909 charter member of the N.A.A.C.P., she was an active worker for women’s suffrage and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, in the 1950s she lead marches to desegregate restaurants in Washington, D.C. She authored A Colored Woman in a White World.