On this day in 1863, a pioneer in education and civil rights named Mary Church Terrell was born in the Bluff City to formerly enslaved parents.
Mary’s mother Louisa managed a hair salon, while her father Robert became a successful real estate investor and banker, leading him to be regarded as one of the South’s first African American millionaires.
Her family’s unique success afforded Mary the opportunity to receive a premier education at such institutions as Oberlin College (one of only a handful of institutions open to black women at that time), where she would go on to earn a Master’s Degree in 1888, becoming one of the first African American women to receive a college degree.
From there, Mary would go on to become a teacher in Washington, D.C., travel abroad to gain fluency in several European languages, and even be mentored by such contemporary civil rights figures as Frederick Douglass, who encouraged her efforts to fight for racial equality and women’s suffrage.
Mary Church Terrell would ultimately pass away on July 24, 1954 at the age of 90, but her legacy lives on today as her home in D.C. has since been designated a National Historic Landmark.
