Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell (born September 23, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee – July 24, 1954 in Annapolis). She was a writer and civil rights activists. Both her parents, Robert Church and Louisa Ayers, were both former slaves.

Terrell majored in classics at Oberlin College, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1884, one of the first African American women awarded a college degree. She studied in Europe for two years, becoming fluent in French, German, and Italian. A high school teacher and principal, Terrell was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education, the first black woman in the United States to hold such a position. She led the successful fight to integrate eating places in the District of Columbia. Local integration laws dating back to 1872 and 1873 had disappeared in the 1890s when the District Code was written. The laws had required all eating-place proprietors "to serve any respectable, well-behaved person regardless of color, or face a $1,000 fine and forfeiture of their license." Terrell launched a campaign to reinstate these anti-discrimination laws. On February 28, 1950, she and several colleagues entered segregated Thompson Restaurant. When they were refused service, they promptly filed a lawsuit. In the three years pending a decision in District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Terrell targeted other restaurants, this time using tactics such as boycotts, picketing, and sit-ins. Finally, on June 8, 1953, the court ruled that segregated eating places in Washington, DC, were unconstitutional. Terrell is responsible for other civil rights gains. Again in her 80s, she succeeded in persuading the local chapter of the National Association of University Women to admit black members. Earlier in her life, she was president of the National Association of Colored Women, founder of the NAACP's Executive Committee, member of a committee investigating alleged police mistreatment of African Americans, and the first black woman in the United States to earn an appointment to a school board.