Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) was born in Memphis to formerly enslaved parents who became prosperous after emancipation. Her father, Robert Church, grew into one of the South's first Black millionaires. That material advantage gave Terrell access to Oberlin College, where she earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree — rare for anyone in the 1880s, extraordinary for a Black woman.

Terrell refused to treat the fight for racial equality and the fight for women's suffrage as separate causes. She co-founded the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and helped establish the NAACP in 1909. She lobbied Congress, spoke fluent German and French (sometimes deploying both in international addresses to embarrass American racial hypocrisy in front of European audiences), and wrote relentlessly. Washington, D.C. appointed her to its Board of Education — the first Black woman in the country to hold such a post.

She did not slow down in old age. At 86, Terrell led a boycott and sit-in campaign against segregated restaurants in Washington, D.C., personally joining protesters at lunch counters. In 1953 — a year before her death — the Supreme Court ruled in her favor in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., desegregating the capital's public dining. She died at 90, having outlasted most of her opponents and won.