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(1/13) Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to a wealthy family. She was your typical woman in society but had a passion for women’s rights reform and highlighted racial inequities. Terrell went to Oberlin College where she took men’s courses.
(2/13) Terrell later would become the Colored Women’s League president and founded the National Association of Colored Women. She is most known for her speech “The Progress of Colored Women.” This speech highlighted the academic and legislative advancements by black women.
(3/13) In her 1898 speech, Terrell made her stance on racial uplift and feminism known. She told her majority White listeners of the achievements Black women had made socially, politically, and economically since the end of slavery.
(4/13) Black women across the country were building and investing in their communities. They sought higher learning, had families, and built Churches, senior care homes, and orphanages. They did this all while maintaining an undeniable grace and dignity.
(5/13) Terrell demonstrates the achievements Black women have made for their entire community. Black women faced racism and sexism in the segregationist laws and oppressive cultural norms. Yet they succeeded in White dominated fields of academia, literature, business ownership.
(6/13)Terrill saw BW like herself laying a path for a better future, proving advancement possible. Her 1898 speech ends w/ “lifting as they climb… struggling and striving in hope that the bud and blossoms of their desires may burst into glorious fruition”
(7/13)Terrell, in her speech, applauses the advancements made by black women only two generations away from slavery. She does this to highlight what black women are capable of when given an opportunity but simultaneously condemns society for limiting them.
(8/13) Terrell showed the world that by allowing black women to receive an education overall helped their surrounding communities to flourish.
(9/13) “Not only are colored women with ambition and aspiration handicapped on account of their sex, but they are almost everywhere baffled and mocked because of their race.” (64)
(10/13) “No sooner had the heads of a favored few been filled with knowledge than their hearts yearned to dispense blessings to the less fortunate of their race. With tireless energy and eager zeal colored women have worked in every conceivable way to elevate their race.” (65)
(11/13)Terrell encouraged women to be more than the foul aspersions society cast on them. Her work highlights the determination black women embody to cultivate the black community. Terrell’s efforts also foreshadowed the progress that would emerge from the generations behind her.
(12/13)Essentially Terrell’s efforts have inspired many to obtain a college education. Her commitment to intellectual progress opened countless doors of opportunity for black women.
(13/13) The quotes in this thread come from “The Progress of Colored Women” a 1898 speech from Mary Church Terrell and When and Where I Enter “‘To Sell My Life as Dearly as Possible’: Ida B. Wells and the First Antilynching Campaign” by Paula Giddings.
