This talk spotlights the activism of Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954), who was born into slavery during the Civil War; who waged a freedom struggle against lynching and racism and in support of women’s votes, equal education, antiwar efforts, and civil rights. Dedicated to changing the culture and institutions that perpetuated inequality throughout the United States, Terrell was a suffragist, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women,and a founding member of the NAACP. One of the most prominent activists of her time, Terrell’s remarkable career bridged the late nineteenth century to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s.

Alison M. Parker is History Department Chair and Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware. She has research and teaching interests at the intersections of gender, race, citizenship and the law in U.S. history. She majored in art history and history at the University of California, Berkeley and earned a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University. In 2017-2018, Professor Parker was an Andrew Mellon Advanced Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, where she worked on her biography of the civil rights activist and suffragist Mary Church Terrell.