The 19th Amendment

Mary Church Terrell

Mary Church Terrell was the daughter of former slaves, born in Memphis, Tennessee on September 23, 1863. Her father, Robert Reed Church, became one of the South’s first millionaires. She attended Antioch College Laboratory School in Ohio and went on to attend Oberlin College, where she received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree. She moved to Washington DC in 1887 to teach at the M Street Colored High School. She married fellow teacher Herberton Terrell in 1891. 

Mary Church Terrell joined Ida B. Wells-Barnett in anti-lynching campaigns in 1892 after a friend had been lynched in Memphis. Terrell’s activism focused on the notion of racial uplift, the belief that Black people would help to end racial discrimination by advancing themselves in their communities through education, work, and community activism. The belief led her to help found the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. While president (1896-1901) Terrell got the group involved with the Women’s Suffrage movement. Terrell argued that the vote for Black women was essential to the fight for civil rights due to the disadvantages of being both Black and a woman. During the famous demonstration in Washington, D.C. in 1913, she refused to be segregated and marched alongside the sisters of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She and her daughter also participated in picketing the White House in 1917. Terrell dedicated her life to advocating for her women’s and Black communities’ rights. In 1948, she became the first Black member of the American Association of University of Women after winning an anti-discrimination case. Mary Church Terrell died a few months after the 1954 landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education.

Angelina Weld Grimke

Angelina Weld Grimke was born into a distinguished and biracial family in Boston, Massachusetts on February 27, 1880. Her father was Archibald Grimke, a prominent attorney who was the second black man to graduate from Harvard Law School and served as the Vice President of the NAACP after helping found the organization in 1909.  Angelina was named after her great aunt, Angelina Grimké Weld, a famous white abolitionist and women’s rights advocate.

Archibald moved to Washington, D.C. with his daughter where she became a well-known feminist. Angelina was a journalist, poet, playwright, suffragist, and teacher. She taught English at Dunbar High School and then went on to write short stories, poetry, and even wrote a play titled, Rachel, which was the first play to be performed with an all-Black cast and written by a Black woman. In her literary work, she wrote of the pain and violence that Black women experience in their day-to-day lives. Her literary works foreshadowed the Harlem Renaissance, not actually having been apart of the movement, but rather, helping inspire the poets and writers who would become famous during the Harlem Renaissance. Scholars have also distinguished strong evidence within her texts that she was either bisexual or a lesbian. There was also a letter that Angelina wrote when she was 16 years old to a friend, Mary P. Burrill, a fellow playwright and educator, that she hoped to marry and love her one day. Angelina rejected the double standards that were imposed on women, such as marriage, education, and employment. She believed that “the injustices will end” once women obtained the ballot.

Nannie Hellen Burroughs

Nannie Hellen Burroughs was born in Orange, Virginia to former slaves in 1879/1880. After the death of her father, Burroughs and her mother moved to Washington, D.C to ensure that Nannie would receive an education. After graduating from high school, she was rejected from teaching positions because she was considered “too dark.” Burroughs later moved to Memphis, Tennessee to join and work for the Black Baptist Convention. She garnered support and attention when she delivered a speech at the National Baptist Convention titled, “How the Sisters are Hindered from Helping.” She later founded the Women's Convention of the National Baptist Convention, a nationally powerful group that consisted of Black women. A primary focus of the group was women’s suffrage. 

In 1909, Burroughs established the Trades Hall of National Training School for Women and Girls on land she purchased in Washington, D.C.; the land was bought with donations from the Black community. The curriculum combined academic work with domestic and industrial training. Along with advocating for girls’ education, Burroughs also supported civil rights, particularly for Black women in the United States. She wrote articles in the Crisis Magazine, the official publication of the NAACP. Burroughs believed that all women, regardless of race, should have access to education and job training and that Black and white women needed to work together to achieve women’s suffrage. After Burroughs’ death in May of 1961, the National Training School for Women and Girls was renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in honor of her life’s devotion to women’s rights.