"WITNESS FOR THE LONG HAUL"

“WITNESS FOR THE LONG HAUL”

            In 1948 at age 85, in a snowstorm in December in DC, a stooped white-haired old lady, wearing finery such as a fur coat and pearls, leaned on a cane and led a march urging the downtown Kresge store to desegregate its facilities.  She had been protesting racial and gender injustice since the mid-1870’s.  Her name at that time was Mary Church Terrell, but at her birth she was Mary (Mollie) Church. 

            In her autobiography “A Colored Woman in a White World,” published in 1940, she wrote “If it hadn’t been for the victory of the Union Army, I should be on some plantation in the South, manacled body and soul in the fetters of a slave.“  She was born in September, 1863, in Memphis, just nine months after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was took effect.  She would join Ida Wells as one of the primary African-American women who worked for the passage of the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.  Though her status as slave or free was in doubt until the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, she was born into a wealthy black family, headed by Robert Church.  She had the many advantages of being wealthy in America, with one huge exception:  her racial classification was “black.”  She would wrestle with the meaning and the struggle of such classification all her life.

            In 1866, those classified as white in Memphis began the terrorizing work of re-establishing slavery by fomenting a white race riot, and her father was shot in the head.  He recovered, and then he decided to send Mary Church north for her education.   She enrolled in Antioch College Model School in Ohio at age 6 – she was the only African-American in her class.  At age 12 she enrolled for high school and college at Oberlin, and in her first year in high school she wrote an essay entitled “Resolved, There Should Be a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution Granting Suffrage to Women.”  She indicated that she could not remember a time when she did not believe in votes for women. 

            After graduating from college, she became active in education for black children and began working in earnest for women’s rights and the right to vote for women.  In the fight for women’s rights, she stepped headlong into the intersection between race and gender, which divided the women’s rights movement.  Most southern white suffragists opposed rights for black women, and Northern white women feared the loss of white southern women’s support over this issue.  Lest this seem like ancient history, let us note that the tensions over this intersection of race and gender continue right up to the present moment.  She began attending the meetings of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, where she met Susan B. Anthony and became friends with her.  Terrell gave an address in 1898 to the Association entitled “The Progress and Problems of Colored Women.”  Most of the white women attendees were astonished at her prowess, and while she loved the adoration, she also knew that it meant that their racism deeply affected their expectations:  black women simply were unable to do these kinds of things.  She signed on to do a lecture tour, which she continued to do for many years.  She also was a founding member of the NAACP, and she kept working for rights for those classified as “black” and for all women.        

            After the 19^th Amendment was finally passed, Terrell worked hard to try to get black women included in this idea, but as we all know, she (and many others) failed.  The denial of the vote to black women (and men) would continue until the Voting Rights act of 1965 was passed, but the tensions between white women and women of color, especially black women, continue to hinder us all in the fight for justice and equity.

            The ratification of the ERA by the legislature of Virginia earlier this year may lead to its addition to the Constitution, building on the work of many women of all colors.  Warriors like Terrell and Ida Wells would be glad, but they would still ask:  “What’s in it for black women and other women of color?”  It will be our generation and those to come who will answer that question.  What will our witness look like over the long haul?  If we make it to age 85, will we be out in the snow, standing and protesting and working for justice and equity?