Mary Church Terrell

Terrell, Mary Church (1863–1954), U.S. activist in the movement for equal rights for African Americans. The daughter of a wealthy ex-slave, she graduated from Oberlin College (1884) before settling in Washington, D.C. She became one of the first 2 women and the first African American on the city's school board (1895), and helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896). Throughout her life she continued to act as an adviser and advocate on racial issues and helped end the city's racial discrimination in public facilities in 1953. Much of her life is detailed in her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940).