Mary Church Terrell
(September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954)

326 T St. NW, LeDroit Park neighborhood, DC.

One of the first African American women to earn a college degree, Terrell is best known as an activist working for civil rights and women's rights. She is author of a memoir, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940).

Terrell served on the DC Board of Education from 1895 to 1906, the first African American woman in the nation to hold such a position. She was president of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, and co-founded the National Association of College Women. In 1909, she became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was an organizer for the women's suffrage movement after World War I, and led the fight to integrate restaurants in DC in 1950.

Terrell's journalism was published widely in both the white and black press, in such publications as the Afro-American, New York Age, Washington Tribune, Washington Evening Star, and the Washington Post.

A museum is planned for this site, commemorating Terrell and her husband, Robert H. Terrell, the first African American Municipal Judge in the District of Columbia.

Humanities Council of Washington, "Wide Enough for Our Ambition: D.C.'s Segregated African American Schools (1807 - 1954)"
Robert and Mary Church Terrell House and LeDroit Park Museum

Historic author photo courtesy of National Park Service .