Existing comment:
Mary Church Terrell, 1863-1954
After her childhood friend, Thomas Moss, was lynched in 1892, Mary Church Terrell devoted her life to activism. She served in various capacities within the National Association of Colored Women, becoming its first president in 1896. In that role, Terrell spoke to the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1898 about black women's activism within their homes and communities. She described their efforts as: "lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long."
H.M. Platt, 1884 |