SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE
Drafts, A Colored Woman in a White 
World (8)

156
                                                   A Few Cases of Friction.
    Although I have been more or less intimately associated with white people
all my life, have entertained views on the race problem which have been considered 
quite radical by some and have alwyas expressed my opinion, I have have no
open break with them as a group and I have had friction with individuals a very
few times.
    As a member of the Board of Education I might easily have fallen out with
a man whose friendship I prized highly, because he insisted upon dismissing a 
supervising principal who was an excellent officer and one of the finest teachers
in the corps, but who in the kindness of his heart had given here salary to
a teacher in dure need and distress in a manner not prescribed by the rules.
My good friend, Captain James F. Oyster was a prosperous business man who believed
so thoroughly in business methods he insisted any school officer
who failed to observe them should be dismissed, no matter how fine an instructor
of officer he might be.
     I valued Captain Oyster's friendship, because he was one of nature's noble
men, was always willing to assit me in my efforts to put through measures
which I believed would improve the school system and I could rely absolutely
upon any promise he made, because he was courageous and outspoken almost to a 
fault and because he had as little race prejudice as it is possible for a 
white man to have. When it looked as though our friendship could not weather
this storm, after I had tried to convert him to my point of view and had failed
I resigned myself to my fate, but held firmly and desperately to my efforts to
save the supervising principal from dismissal. I finally succeeded in saving
the school officer and also in retaining the friendship of Captain Oyster as
well, because he was a broad-minded man and when he finally yielded a point,
he let the dead past bury its dead.
                  During the eleven years I was a member of the Board of Education
I often differed materially with the others, both colored and white. I never
had bitter words or an open break with anybody. Perhaps I came as near having
friction with a few members of the Executive Committee of the International
League of Peace and Freedom as with any white people with whom I was ever associated. 

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I was asked to sign a petition requesting the removal of the black
troops from occupied German territory. I was told that all the other members
of the Executive Committee were willing to sign it and that it was especially
desirable for me to affix my signature, because the Committee wished to make
the request unanimous.
               One of the women who talked with me about it was Mrs. Lafollette, wife 
of the late Senator from Wisconsin. What she said in favor of the petition impressed 
me deeply. She seemed to have no race prejudice whatever and always
had the courage of her convictions when she felt it was necessary to show
where she stood on the Colored-American's right to a square deal. Both by
word and by deed Mrs. Lafollette often placed herself on record as being in
favor of any legislation or of any effort designed to give Colored people all
the rights and privileges which other citizens enjoy. Because I held Mrs. Lafollette 
in such high esteem it would have afforded me great pleasure to, comply
with her request.
        I knew she wanted the petition signed, because she believed it would pour oil on the
troubled waters to have France remove the black troops from German soil.
One afternoon Mrs. Lafollette invited me to her beautiful home and we had tea
together. I tried to listen with an open mind to the arguments she presented
in favor of it, but, try as hard as I might, I could not see my way clear to 
to sign that petition. [Disliked?], however, to be the only member of the Executive
Committee to refuse to sign it and thus make it impossible for the others
to say that their position on the matter was unanimous. After mature deliberation
I decided that it was my duty to resign from the Committee and I wrote 
the following letter to Miss Jane Addams:
              Washington, D.C.
             March 18, 1921. My dear Miss Addams:  It is plainly my duty to write
you concerning a matter in which you are deeply interested, I know. I have
been requested to sign a petition asking for the removal of the black troops
from German territory. The most terrible crimes are said to be committed by
these black troops against the German women. I belong to a race whose women
have been the victims of assaults committed upon them by white men of all

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races. As a rule, these men have ruined and wrecked the women of my race with 
impunity, For that reason I sympathize deeply with the German women, if they 
really are the victims of the passions of black men.
           I pith them in their present peril as I pitied the French women when the 
newspapers told us of the brutal treatment they received at the hands of the
German soldiers who were quartered in France. Because the women of my race
have suffered so terribly and so long from assaults committed with impunity by
men of all races, I am all the more pained at the brutal treatment to which
German women are now said to be subjected by black troops.
          However,  I am certain that the black soldiers are committing no more 
assaults upon the German women than the German men committed upon French women or
that any race of soldiers would probably commit upon women in occupied territory
Our own American soldiers treated the Haitien women brutally. On good authority
it is asserted that young Haitien girls were not only cruelly misused but were
actually murdered by some of our soldiers. I can not vouch for the truth of
that statement, but it is not at all difficult for me to believe that white
Americans would treat colored women as brutally as our soldiers are said to 
have treated the Haitien women.
           I can not sign the petition asking for the removal of the black
troops, because I believe it is a direct appeal to race prejudice. In all the 
statements concerning the matter great emphasis is laid upon the fact that 
these troops are worse than white soldiers. That is a reflection upon them
which I am sure they do not deserve. Charges are usually preferred against
soldiers of all races who are quartered in the land they have conquered. I can
readily understand that if a German woman had to be outraged, she would prefer
to suffer at the hands of a white man rather than at the hands of a black man.
But, even though that be true, I cannot sign a petition asking for the removal
of these troops, because they are black.
          On good authority I have been informed that the charges preferred against
black troops are not founded in fact. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt investigated the
charges against the black troops when she was in Geneva and found, according to
the testimony of reputable people living in the region where the atrocities

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were alleged to have been committed, that these black soldiers had conducted 
themselves with more courtesy and consideration than any white troops who had been 
stationed there.
            Two German delegates told Mrs. Catt that there was a movement in Germany
to ask France to remove these Colored troops and that, so far as they knew, there
was no complaint in Germany on that score. Mrs. Catt says that the three German
women with whom she talked in Geneva promised to investigate the charges,against
the Colored troops which were being circulated in this country and to let her know
later.
            "I saw all three of them in London early in December," says Mrs. Catt,
"and again they reiterated the same statement in Geneva, which was to the effect
that atrocities such as are being described in the United States could not have
been committed by the Army of Occupation without the masses of people of Germany
knowing about it, and that they had heard nothing which warranted such
charges being made."
             Moreover,some of the leading business men in the Rhineland  have recently
issued an indignant disclaimer of the propaganda campaign against the black 
troops. Director Reutten declared that investigation by the Rhineland Traffic Association
had shown that stories of molestation of the population by the troops
of occupation were untrue.
            I cannot sign the petition asking for the removal of the black troops
with these facts staring me in the face. The propaganda against the black troops
is simply another violent and plausible appeal to race prejudice. It is very painful 
to me not to do anything which you or the organization that I love would like
to have me do. Knowing you as well as I do, however, I feel sure you do not want
me to be untrue to myself or to the race with which I am identified simply to
please my friends.
          I do not want to be stumbling block or a nuisance as a member of the Executive 
Committee. I am willing to resign. You have always been such a true friend
to me, my esteem and affection for you are so great, I do not want to do anything
which will embarrass you as the head of the International League for Peace and

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Freedom. I am not at all sure I can be resent at the annual meeting next month.
I shall try to be there. Please speak frankly to me. I am not narrow. I want to
know the truth and do right.
With gratitude to you for the many kindnesses to me in the past and with
the highest esteem, I am sincerely yours, Mary Church Terrell.
n a few days I received the following letter from Miss Addams written
by her own dear hand March 29, 1921. My dear Mrs. Terrell: I was chariman of a
Committee in the Chicago Branch on the colored troops on the Rhine and came to [?]
exactly the same conclusion which you have reached- that we should protest
against the occupation of enemy territory, not against any special troops. I am
quite sure you will find the annual meeting absolutely fair on the subject and I 
hope very much that you will be able to attend the meeting on Monday, April 11th
when the matter will probably come up. i have just come back from [?] and
found your letter here. Please excuse this late reply. Faithfully yours,
Jane Addams.
This letter was a great relief to my mind. I was glad not to be forced 
to resign from the Executive Committee of the League, for I enjoyed working for
peace and the contacts made with the fine women who were members were edica-
tion to me. It also afforded me an excellent opportunity of getting out of the
"Ghetto" in Washington and [?] dominant race as I had
been accustomed to do during my childhood and youth.
But two years later the question of removing the black troops again dis-
turbed the public mind and this time France succumbed to the clamor which was 
raised. Feeling that it was my duty to let some of the French officials know
how a colored woman in the United States felt about the matter I sent the fol-
lowing letter to Premier Poincare:
Washington,D.C.
[?]
[?]
[?]

Premier Poincare,
Paris, France,
Dear Sir:
The colored people of the United States are shocked, dis-
couraged
couraged and pained beyond expression at the cable gram sent by you January 

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15th to give the American State Department the assurance that only white
troops are being used or will be used in the [?] and that black troops rom
Morocco and Algeria will be barred.
Many colored people in this country love France devotedly, because
they have experienced real liberty for the first time in their lives while trav
elling on French soils and have there enjoyed privileges accorded only to
white citizens in the United States. We love France also, because, as a rule,
she has treated her dark citizens with justice and consideration. She has nev-
er discriminated against people on account of the color of their skin and
placed insurmountable obstacles in their path to progress, but has allowed them
to reach any heights to which on account of their ability and their efforts they
might attain.
We are proud of the brilliant effort which the African soldiers fight-
ing under the French flag made during the World War. For African blood flows
through the veins of the colored people of the United States. We recall with
pride that at the first battle of the [?] it was the black troops who helped
to save France from utter destruction and preserved civilization to the world.
The [?] ran red with the blood of those brave, black soldiers who fought so
desperately and effectively to save their beloved France.
And now, in spite of the valiant service rendered by these troops, the
Premier of [?] French Republic which owes its salvation largely to their blood
and sacrifice, takes the time and the pains to cable the world that they will
be barred from the [?] in deference to the race prejudice which certain coun-
tries practice in their treatment of colored people. Thus, for the first time
in her history France publicly places a stigma upon her black citizens.
Having preserved an unblemished record in this particular for centuries
France has at last publicly prostrated herself before the monster, Race Preju-
dice, and trailed her proud banner in the dust.
For a long time some of us colored-Americans who have loved France so
dearly have feared that she would eventually be inoculated with the deadly germ
of Race Prejudice through intimate association with other nations in which
men, women and children are burned at the stake, shot to dealth and flayed 

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alive with impunity in many instances solely because their complexion was
dark. But Frenchmen, both white and black, have always ridiculed the idea
that this could ever happen in their land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, 
and have assured me that I need give myself no concern on this account.

When I was in Paris immediately after the Wold War and expressed [?]
this fear to one of the most distinguished and well-known authors in France,
he replied:"France can no more learn race prejudice than the average white
person in the United Stages can unlearn it."

The colored people of the United States have no right to question
the wisdom of France's decision to bar black troops from the [?]. We do not
and can not understand all the reasons why she has decided to pursue this
course. Nor is it necessary for us to understand them. But, we submit, that
if for good and sufficient reasons it was deemed wise to draw the line between 
black and white soldiers, the interests of her brave, black soldiers
to whom she owes so much, would have been better conserved, if that fact had
not been cabled broadcast throughout the world. Since France has always stood 
for absolute equality between her white and black citizens, her attitude in deliberately 
barring black troops from the Ruhr will not only be interpreted
by the world as a reflection upon them, but it will give aid and comfort to
those already steeped in prejudice against their race.

The cablegram sent by your Excellency assuring the American State Department 
that only white troops are being or will be used in the Ruhr and
that the Colonial troops from Morocco and Algeria will be barred certainly
panders to the race prejudice which rages so violently abd so ruthlessly in
the United States. It is a great blow to many colored women in this country
whose husbands and sons lost their lives in the World War to save France.

We hope that France's decision to bar her black troops from the Ruhr
does not portend any radical change in her attitude toward the dark races
and we beseech the leaders of the great French Republic to do nothing more
which will encourage the spread of race prejudice throughout the world,

May the day never dawn when France will exchange her slogan of Liber
th, Equality, Fraternity which colored people have always enjoyed on her beloved


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 soil for one of discrimination, injustice,prescription and persecution
which handicap them so seriously and from which they suffer so terribly in
the United States.

Very sincerely yours, Mary Church Terrell.

Although I received no reply to this letter, I was well aware that
some of the Higher Ups in France learned from it how shocked colored citizens in the United 
States were that those brave, black troops, some of which saved civilization
at the Marne, had been withdrawn from the Ruhr in deference to the wishes of people 
steeped in race prejudice and replaced by white troops. Having this [Having was shi-]
information to the proper officials three was nothing more that I could do.

The only time I have ever been attacked on the platform by a representative 
of the dominant race for something I have said in an address was in
Baltimore, Maryland. I had been invited to deliver the Commencement address at
the Baltimore High School for colored youth shortly after the United States entered 
the World War. There was a general understanding that the Government wished 
Commencement speakers to refer to the War so as to interest the public in
this country's effort to aid the allies.

In complying with this request I decided to take as my subject "The
Race Problem and the War." In order to encourage the young men in the graduating
class as well as the other men in the audience to do everything in their power
to win the war I referred to the high stand this country has taken.in the conflict. 
Since the United States was fighting to "make the world safe for Democracy," I 
declared, if the allies were victorious the statu of the colored people in
this country would be greatly improved.

"Never since the first cargo of dark human beings was deposited on this
shore has the future loomed so promising and so bright to men and women of African 
descent as it does to day," I said. "Colored youth who have their lives befor 
them are to be congratulated upon the opportunities which for many weary,
dreary years have been denied the race with which they are identified but which
in all human probability they will themselves enjoy. Out of a cataclysm which
deluged practically the whole world in blood and broken the hearts of millions

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millions, suddenly to a heavily-handicapped , cruelly- hindered group of human
beings in the greatest Republic on earth, the dawn appears. "

"For the first time in history the major portion of the civilized world is
fighting for freedom. If actions apeal louder than words, "Give me liberty or
give me death " is the cry that rings from one end of Christendom to the other.
From their thrones of monarchy the Kings of England and Italy are vieing with
Republican France and the United States in declaring war to the last ditch
upon oppression and tyranny everywhere and pledging themselves unalterably and
irrevocably to the cause of freedom for all mankind. The most spiritual and
sanguine prophet that ever dreamed of the day when the iron heel of oppression
would be lifted from the necks of men and women who groaned in bondage could
never have imagined a movement so prodigious, so all-embracing and so irrestible
as the onward, upward march to universal freedom in which millions of men of different 
races and complexions are engaged at the present time."

Then I referred briefly to the gains which had recently been made by
freedom. [?] strongly-entrenched despotism like Russia had been overthrown 
practically without bloodshed in the twinkling of an eye and a Republic
had been set up in its place. England which had turned a deaf ear to Ireland's
prayers and entreaties to be allowed to govern herself seemed at last willing
to remove the note from her own eye that she might the more clearly see how to
pick the beam from her Neighbor's. The East Indians had also been promised the
recognition which they thought they had deserved for years but which they had
hitherto been denied. 

In stating the reasons why she was unwilling to restore to Germany the
African territory wrested from her during the war, England told the world that
while she did not enter the war for the purpose of freeing the natives from German 
rule, nevertheless the outrages perpetrated by Germany upon the Africans
were so savage and wicked, it would be a crime against civilization and humanity
to permit them to bow again under such a cruel yoke, I referred also to the
triumph won by women of England who had been fighting for suffrage so long.

I emphasized the attitude assumed by newspapers which were full of editorials


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editorials asserting that this "War of Democracy against autocracy had brought 
about the formation of a common brotherhood that knows neither race, religion
nor people." I praised the white people of the South for the efforts they were
making to set their house in order. Some terrible outrages had been perpetrated
against colored people a short time before I delivered this Commencement address, 
so I said,"in spite of these barbarous outbreaks against colored people,
such as the lynching near Memphis, Tenn., in which a man was burned to death,
having been confined in a steel cage made expressly for the purpose, while a
little colored boy only ten years old was forced to watch the flames consume 
this helpless victim of a savage mob; in spite of the recent race riots in St.
Louis, where colored men working in munition factories were shot to death, beaten 
into insensibility, while the houses of colored people were set on fire and
destroyed; in spite of other disheartening exhibitions of race prejudice a persecution, 
three is every reason to hope that this nation in the great crisis
which confronts it will really endeavor to raise up the 12,000,000 of colored
people to equal human dignity, as an English writer expresses it, and to wipe
out the national stigma on the American commonwealth that every man, woman and
child born with a dark skin is born to the shame of exclusion from rights guaranteed 
him by the Constitution and from privileges which he should be allowed 
to enjoy.

Several times afterward I laid great emphasis upon my faith in the outcome 
of the war. I assured this audience of colored people that their condition
would be greatly improved, because the people of this country were thinking
about freedom and Democracy as they had never thought before, because their
conscience had been aroused on the subject and because their hearts had been
touched.

The Comptroller of Baltimore had been requested to represent the Mayor
at the Commencement exercise and when he arose to make some remarks,he was so
enraged that he could scarcely control himself. He complimented those who had
spoken, those who had sung- in fact he had words for everybody but myself,
then he launched into a tirade against the speaker of the evening. He almost

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jumped upon her with both feet. White with rage he paced up and down the stag 
criticising my speech.

"The speaker of the evening has predicted that the condition of the
colored people of this country will be improved," he declared with fierce indignation. 
He was too deeply stirred to proceed, so he paused a second. He shouted 
aloud and shook his fist at the audience as he warned" But I tell you people
you will have no more rights after the war than you enjoy now. He shook his
fist at the audience as he uttered this threat.

Then something occurred which I had never heard before in an audience of
colored people and which I have never heard since. They hissed the Comptroller
of Baltimore with all their might. But he shook his fist at them again and told
them sarcastically that he knew all about colored people, that he understood
them perfectly and that he didn't care a fig(or words to that effect) how much
they hissed. The newspaper account of this disgraceful occurrence which appeared 
in the Baltimore American was naturally very biassed and gave only the Comptroller's 
point of view, so I sent a letter to explain and correct it.

Under the headline "Meant to be Optimistic", on June 28, 1917 the Baltimore-American
published my letter as follows:

"The report of the commencement exercises of the Colored High School
which appeared in the Baltimore-American misinterprets the spirit and purpose
of my address to the graduates and misinterprets the spirit, I am charged with
having "aimed scathing and bitter remarks at the white race.", with having"referred 
to certain lynchings and hangings. "

My address consumed 50 minutes, of which about one minute and a half, perhaps, 
certainly not more, was consumed in referring to to the recent riot in St.
Louis. The Comptroller of Baltimore is reported to have said that it was"my unwise 
reference to lynchings and hangings " which caused him to rebuke me, and the
American states that he"denounced me in no uncertain terms." If only three out
of fifty minutes were devoted to one burning and one race riot, it is clear that
one who reads the report of my address would get a decidedly inaccurate account
of it.

The part of the report which states the Comptroller of Baltimore denounced


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denounced me, the guest of the occasion, in no uncertain terms is literally true.
I doubt that any colored man in the country would treat a woman of any race under 
such circumstances with such discourtesy. The American account states that
the white people who attended the exercises declared that my address should have
been one of optimism, but it was just the opposite, and calculated to arouse
anything but a feeling of good will." It is difficult to believe that any fair-minded 
person who listened to my entire address would have made such a comment.

By insisting that the conditions would cause a better understanding between 
the two races, that efforts are already making in the South to ameliorate
the condition of colored people, by reviewing the marvellous progress along all
lines achieved bu the race since the Civil War, by emphasizing the irreproachable 
record made by the colored soldiers from the Revolutionary War to the martyrdom 
into which brave, colored troopers rushed last summer at Carrisal, I did
everything in my power to create optimism and to inspire with hope the members
of the graduating class,

I have spoken in ever State of the South, and rarely have I addressed
an audience in that section in which no white people were present. I have always
pleaded for my heavily-handicapped race and expressed the hope that some day they
would enjoy greater freedom and be given an equal chance. But, up to date, the
Comptroller of Baltimore is the first man, white or any other color, who has ever
publicly denounced me for anything I have said.

It is possible to take a sentence or two from any address and distort
it into meaning anything a hostile, illiberal,angry man wants it to mean. Moreover, 
some people can not bear the truth, no matter how tactfully it is told. No
doubt the haughty,the tyrannical,the unmerciful, the impure and the [?] of
discord take a fierce exception to the Sermon on the Mount."

Mary Church Terrell.

With one exception the most serious friction which has ever occurred
between white and colored club women was caused  by the segregation of the race
in the Washington auditorium when the Quinquennial met here in May 1925. Mrs. 
Mary McLeod Bethune who was then president of the national Association of Colored
Women had requested me to confer with the Chairman on Music appointed by the

168

American Council of Women, because she happened to be stopping at the Mayflower 
Hotel, while she was making out the program. Arrangements had been made by
a former president of the National Association of Colored Women to have 200
colored singers from the Richmond, Va.Treble Clef Club, the Hampton Institute 
Choir, the Howard University Choral Society of Washington, D.C. and musicians
of note like Nathaniel Dett, the well-known composer and Professor Roy Tibbs
of Howard University to take part in the program.

But the night on which the colored musicians were to appear, colored
people who went to the auditorium discovered that they were not only segregated, 
but that they were seated for the most part in the most undesirable section 
of the building. When the singers learned this, they refused to appear.
[This was a great disappointment to] The large audience, many of whom had gone
expressly to hear the colored musicians, was greatly disappointed. This was especially true of the foreign 
women who had looked forward to this concert with great anticipations of
pleasure. When they learned the cause of the trouble, they were thoroughly 
disgusted. Among both white and colored people who were genuinely interested
in the welfare of the race opinions concerning the wisdom of the step taken 
by the singers differed.

Some felt that they had missed a glorious opportunity on a notable occasion of showing
what they had accomplished in music and what they could do. But without exception 
all the officers of the National Association as well as the great
majority of colored people all over the United States were a unit in the conviction 
that this drastic action had been forced upon us by those who subjected 
us to the humiliation of segregation in the National Capital, adding
insult to injury by doing so when a large number of foreign women was present
to witness it.

The Executive Committee of the National Association of Colored Women
which was meeting in Washington at the time appointed a committee of which I was chairman to draft resolutions 
explaining our attitude [?] as follows: In order to maintain 
their self-respect the members of the National Association of Colored
Women were forced to cancel their program, prepared at the request of the Music
Department of the National Council of Women, for the Musicale given


169

May 5th by the International Council of Women during its Quinquennial Session
in the national capital.

Since the National Association of Colored Women represents a membership 
of one hundred thousand, the Executive Committee now assembled in Washington 
feel that it is their duty to their organization, to their country,
and to the whole civilized world to explain why they so suddenly withdrew from
a program in which they had made such extensive and expensive plans to participate.

Having learned that there was a possibility that colored people would
be segregated in the Washington auditorium, several officers of the National
Association of Colored Women conferred with the President of the National
Council of Women and with the Chairman of the Department of Music to protest
against the contemplated discrimination.

The National Association of Colored Women is now and has been for
many years a member of the National Council of Women. Therefore, the officers
of the Association feel that they had a right to expect the same courteous
treatment for all members of their race that other groups received. For this
reason they insisted that there should be no separation.

From a written statement made by the President of the National
Council of Women, the officers of the National Association of Colored Women
were led to believe that their race would not be segregated. In order to make
their position in this matter perfectly clear, the officers of the National
Association of Colored Women explicitly stated that if there were any discrimination 
on account of color or race, they would cancel their part of the program. 
Therefore, the charge that the National Association of Colored Women
withdrew from the program without warning is not founded in fact.

Upholding their own purposes and ideals, as well as those of the
International Council of Women, even though they deeply regretted it, the 
officers of the National Association of Colored Women were forced to withdraw
from the program. Mary Church Terrell, Chairman of Committee on Resolutions.

And when it was suggested to have the colored singers appear at a colored 
theatre the Evening Star quotes me as saying: "We consider the appearances

170

at the Howard Theatre as segregation just as much as a separate block of
seats in the Auditorium. If these singers appear in any manner before the
Quinquennial it will be expressly against our orders and in open rebellion."

There was no difference of opinion among those responsible for the
[?] of the colored singers. All agreed that is was a real tragedy they 
were denied the opportunity of entertaining the vast audience gathered to hear
them, particularly the women from foreign lands who were eager to see them and listen 
to them,andeverybody friendly to us regretted also that the race thus lost
such a fine chance of displaying its musical ability through its talented representatives and of proving to what a high standard of excellence it had attained. 
But, under the circumstances the rendition of the program was impossible. 
When the members of the choirs and the chorusses who were to appear on the
program that night heard how those of their own race had come to the
concert were to be treated, they said they were too depressed to sing.


171

Delegate to the International Peace Congress.

The following letter which was received one morning about the middle of
December, 1918 thrilled me with surprise and joy. "Dear Mrs. Terrell," it
read,"It gives me real pleasure to inform you that at a meeting of the Executive 
Board the Women's Peace Party, which is the section for the U.S.A. of 
the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace, held in New York City
November 24, you were elected as one of thirty delegates and alternates to the
International Congress of Women which it was arranged at the Hague in 1915
should meet at the time of the Peace Conference at the end of the War."
The letter stated that it was likely the meeting would be held either at Paris
or the Hague and the time might be either the first week in February or early
in May.

"We realize," the letter concluded,"that this is not an easy journey
which we are inviting you to take under crowded conditions,in winter, to war-
worn countries. But we sincerely hope that your love of human welfare will minimize 
the difficulties and that you will be able to go with us. Faithfully yours
Alice Thacher Post, Secretary of Delegates from the U.S.A." Mrs. Post was the
wife of Mr. Louis Post who was then Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Woodrow
Wilson.

I was working for the War Camp Community Service at the time and was in
the South trying to induce some of the Committees of the large cities to sanction 
the establishment of centers for colored women and girls. After completing
the summary of the conditions which obtained n these cities I sent it to headquarters 
and asked for a leave of absence to go as a delegate to the Peace Congress 
which would soon be held in Europe. This was granted in the following letter:
"My dear Mrs. Terrell: Thank you for the summary; it is a fine piece of work
and the classification workers are delighted with it. It will help us materially
 in understanding the problems of the cities you visited. We wish to express our
appreciation of the devoted service you have given W.C.C.S. through the past
months, and willingly grant you the leave of absence to enable you to make the
important trip abroad. Wishing you success in your new undertaking, Very sincerely
yours, (signed) Geo. E. Dickie, Director Field Department."

172

Miss Jane Addams, president of the International League for Peace and Freedom
was eager to have me attend the Congress [and so was] and so was Mr. Moorefield Storey, 
president of the N.A.A.C.P., Miss Millen Mason and Mr. Joseph Loud of Boston,
Mr. and Mrs. F.W. Hallowell Medford, Massachusetts; 
Mrs. Leach and the Misses Lewisohn of New York, Mr. Julius Rosenwald 
the philanthropist and several other prominent people were genuinely interested 
in having me go abroad and each one assisted in making the voyage
possible.

For three years [of years] I was [been] a member of the Executive Committee of the
United States Section of the International League for Peace and Freedom and
several times I attended meetings in the residence home of Mrs. Lucy Biddle Lewis the chairman who
lived in a delightful old-fashioned home in the midst of spacious grounds a
few miles from Philadelphia.

Securing a passport to go abroad shortly after the armistice was
signed was no easy matter. It was especially difficult to get one for France.
The State Department refused to give passports to the 30 delegates and alternates 
to the Congress, as originally planned and reduced the number to
15. Under the circumstances it would have been very easy to leave the colored
delegate out, since there was undoubtedly a goodly number of white women who
had been deeply interested in the peace movement and who had contributed liberally 
to the cause and were financially able to go. For that reason I was
felt a signal honor had been conferred upon me by the Peace Party, when my
name was retained as a delegate.

Since I had worked for the War Camp Community Service till the last
minute, I had only a few days in which [to] prepare for the voyage after I reached home
from New York. Having secured my passport In Washington, I had to have ample
time for the visas in New York. This necessaitated trips to the consulates of 
all the countries named in the passport, to the office of the line in which
passage had been booked as well as to the custom house of New York. One was
also advised that some of the visa work had to be done at least 72 hours before 
sailing. But the fates were very kind to me and I went through the mill
in two days.


173

I was fortunate also in securing a fine, large stateroom in which there was
only one other passenger, a young woman born in Holland whose parents had
grown rich in Java, one of the Dutch possessions. With a party consisting of
Miss Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House and president of the International
League for Peace and Freedom, Miss Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to be
elected to the Congress of the United States, Mrs. Louis Post, Mrs. Florence
Kelly, an official in the Consumer's League, Dr. Alice Hamilton, the first
woman who was ever invited for the Peace Party and Mrs. John Jay White, a writer, 
we sailed from New York on the Hoordam, Holland-America line April 9th,
1918 almost five months to the day after the armistice was signed. 

On the steamer going over all of our party sat at the captain's table 
and received as much attention as was good for any of us. Every morning 
we worked hard in Miss Addams' room trying to decide on the resolutions
which should be presented to the Congress and in what language they should be
couched, The necessity of typewriting these resolutions became very apparent
. But where was a typewriter to be found? That was indeed the questions and
who would type them, if haply we could locate a machine. I guaranteed to get
a typewriter and promised to type the resolutions. This was not hard to do, [It involved a no difficulty
whatever] for the purser cheerfully consented to lend me the machine a
short while each morning and edit. some of the resolutions so
that everybody in the delegation approved of them was by no means easy and
considerable gray matter was consumed in that operation.

We reached Paris Easter Sunday morning and experienced some difficulty 
in securing suitable quarters, because all the hostelries were full.
It was finally decided to go to the Hotel Continental. Miss Jannette Rankin
invited me to [take] share a room having two beds with her and we selected one next
to that occupied by Miss Addams and Dr. Alice Hamilton. These rooms were beautiful 
but they cost a pretty penny. We remained in Paris several weeks, before 
it could definitely decided just where the Congress should meet.
Finally Zurich Switzerland was selected as the place and May 12-17 as the 
time.

174

Attending this Congress was as interesting,as illuminating and as gratifying 
an experience as it falls to the lot of the average woman to have.
In the first place, we were a group of women meeting to advocate peace right after
the war in which the major portion of the civilized world had engaged. I was
about to say that women from all parts of the world were present. But, on sober, 
second thought it is more truthful to say that women from all over the
white world were present. There was not a single delegate from Japan, China,
India or from any other country whose inhabitants were not white. Since I was
the only woman present who had even a drop of African blood in her veins, it was
my duty and privilege for the second time in my life not only to represent
the colored women of the United States but the whole continent of Africa as
well. In fact, since I was the only delegate who gave any color to the occasion 
at all, it finally dawned upon me that I was representing the women of
all the non-white countries in the world. 

I shall not attempt to mention in detail the subjects discussed or
the measures proposed or the work actually done by the International Congress
of Women which met in Zurich soon after that awful World War in which millions 
of men were killed, other millions maimed for life, not to mention the
millions of women and children who were killed outright or who died as the
result of the terrible conditions under which they were obliged to live and
in consequence of the unspeakable torture to which thousands of women both
young and old were subjected by soldiers without regard to country race.

No group of human beings could have made more earnest or conscientious 
efforts to help solve the problems of reconstruction and readjustments 
incident to the great World War than did the women who took part in that Congress. 
A striking, never-to-be-forgotten feature was the good feeling existing 
between the French and the German women who were present. Owing to France
France's hostile attitude toward the Peace Congress some of the French women
who wished to attend as delegates were unable to secure passports. But the
letters and sentiments exchanged between the women of those two hostile countries 
showed their breadth of view, their sincerity of purpose and their de-
[??????????????????????????????????????] or doubt


175

On the third day of the Congress Miss Addams called me to her and
toldme that the American delegation had voted unanimously to have me represent 
them the next night, Thursday. Although the notice for such an important
effort was very short, I decided immediately to deliver my address in
German, since Zurich is in German Switzerland and I wanted as many in the audience 
as possible to understand what I had to say.

Everybody connected with the Congress was as busy as a bee. The resolutions 
and the other important papers which came before the delegates were all
translated into three languages, French German and English, so that I knew [i]
it would be difficult to get one of the official translators to help me.

However, after diligent search I found a young woman who said she would
assist me a little that afternoon(Wednesday) at three o'clock. She had to
leave at six to take a new position, she said, so that what we did would have
to be done quickly. Knowing that it would require more time to express myself
in German than it would in English and that only fifteen minutes had been allotted 
me, it was very difficult to decide what to include and what to omit.
By six o'clock, however, I had definitely made up my mind what to say and with
with the assistance of the clever, obliging Swiss girl it had been translated
into German.

Wednesday night I did nothing but read and reread and study that German 
speech till nearly dawn. I was obliged to attend the meeting Thursday
morning, for I had been notified that my resolution would be called for at 
that session. Nothing but serious illness or death would have kept me from
that morning meeting, not even the desire to appear well that evening, so
eager was I to be present when my precious resolution was presented to the
delegates. I had written, rewritten and then had done it all over again many
times on the steamer, before it was acceptable to the whole delegation.

After the other delegates on the steamer had presented all the resolutions 
which they care to offer I told them I wanted to submit one in
which I was very much interested. I then offered one protesting against the
discriminations, humiliations and injustices perpetrated not only upon the

176
colored people of the United States, but upon the dark races all over the world. Several members of the delegation thought they could improve upon mine, but none of them exactly expressed the thought which I wished to convey. It was finally agreed to let me present the following resolution to the Congress: "We believe no human being should be deprived of an education, prevented from earning a living, debarred from any legitimate pursuit in which he wishes to engage or be subjected to humiliations of various kinds on account of race, color or creed."
Anent [?] this resolution a rather amusing incident occurred. Just before it was to be read to the delegates Miss Emily Bal[?]h, formerly a teacher at Wellesley College and then an officer in the International League, came to me to to tell me my resolution had been changed a little. When I expressed surprise and regret that this had been done without notifying me, she told me it was too late then to discuss the matter, for the resolution which had been substituted for mine had already been translated into German and French and there was nothing left for me to do but go up stairs to the office of the translators, get it and read it. I did as I was directed, feeling very much depressed, not knowing what change had been made in the original. But, when I glanced at the German and French copies I could scarcely believe I was seeing aright, for there before before my very eyes was my own dear resolution in which no change had been made at all. The translator had misunderstood the instructions given her and instead of translating the substitute resolution she had translated mine. It was a proud and gratifying moment in my life when I presented that resolution in person in Zurich Switzerland to the International Congress of Peace and Freedom. It certainly was fitting that I should do this, since I was the only delegate present who represented the dark races of the world and had a chance to speak in their behalf.
That same night I delivered my address. It was the first large meeting which had been held. The previous sessions at night had been held in the lecture rooms of the University of Zurich where comparitively few could be accommodated. But this Thursday night meeting was held in a magnigicent old cathedral in which women had never been allowed to speak before. We stood in a pulpit that was high over the heads of the audience and looked down upon the people

177
as we spoke. That wonderful old St. Peter's Cathedral was packed and jammed, for the citizens of Zurich were immensely interested in that Congress. There were six speakers on the program. Addresses had been delivered in French, German, Italian and English, when I was finally introduced to the audience as the last speaker, just after Mrs. Philip Snowden, the well-known English woman had spoken. When Miss Addams presented me she made a slight reference to the Race Problem in the United States, declared that the American delegation was glad to have a representative of the colored group with them and concluded by saying "Although Mrs. Terrell speaks English at home, she is going to speak German to night." That German audience gave unmistakable evidence of the fact that this bit of information was good news to it.
When I finished, the audience thundered with applause. Miss Addams asked me to come forward and acknowledge it. There went up such an outburst of approbation as I had not heard since I addressed the International Congress of Women which had met in Berlin fifteen years previously almost to the month. Unstinted praise was bestowed upon this effort by scores. No matter where I went after that women and men, too, would grasp my hand cordially and compliment me upon [?] German" and upon my speech. When I entered the stores the clerks would refer to my speech and the customers would sometimes stop making purchases to shake my hand in commendation.
But there was nothing remarkable about that speech. It was simply overestimated by the audience because I told the people a few facts which they did not know. It was something new to them presented by a kind of human mongrel such as they rarely see in that part of the moral vineyard. That was all [?] I began by thanking the bread-minded white women of the United States for me to the Congress and giving me the opportunity to speak. If people everywhere would follow their example I said, race problems along with some others would soon disappear from the world. I cheerfully admitted that there were many white people in the United States who assisted colored people in every way they could and who tried to be just.
Then I proceeded to reveal to that foreign audience in German

178

which they could understand the fearful injustices of every description perpetrated 
upon the colored people in the United States. The colored men who
went from their country to fight in France "to make the world safe for Democracy, 
I declared fought for a freedom for other people which they did not possess themselves. 

"My friends," I concluded, "you may talk about permanent peace till
doomsday, but you will never have it, so long as the dark races of the world
are the victims of injustice and prejudice." I also referred to the fact that
at the Peace Conference in Paris two of the most highly civilized and"most Christian nations in the world had
denied racial equality to Japan [at the Peace Conference in Paris] which she
had a right to demand.

I was greatly surprised that I was able to crowd so much in such a
little time. For once in my life I was satisfied with my effort. I have always 
been a harsh critic of myself and have suffered many times after I have
tried my level best to reach a certain standard, because I have felt that I
did not attain unto it. As a result of that effort in Zurich I had many invitations 
to speak in various parts of Europe, but I did not feel it was
right for me to remain away from home long enough to accept them.

While I was in Swizterland I wanted very much to revisit Lausanne,
where as a young woman I had spent so many happy,profitable days in school.
I hoped strongly I would be able to find the family with whom I had stopped
so many years ago. I went to the post office, therefore, and asked one of the
officials it either Mlle. Sarah or Mlle. Marie Gowthorpe still lived in Lausanne. 
He told me they did, [and] gave me their address in a juffy and in a few
minutes I was standing before the door of their apartment. Although we had not
seen each other for thirty years, Sarah who answered the bell, recognized me
immediately. "Mlle Church", she exclaimed. Then came dear Marie of whom I was
especially fond and we had a soulful reunion for a whole afternoon and evening
reviewing old times. 


[*180*]  160

Meeting Old and New Friends in Paris.
A Dose of Race Prejudice Administered by My White Countrymen.

In Paris where I spent five weeks on my way home from the International
Peace Congress which had met in Zurich I renewed my acquaintance with Monsieur 
[Finot] Finot whom I had met fifteen years previously when I was returning 
from the International Congress of Women which had been held in Berlin. 
It was gratifying that this distinguished man who for years had been
making an exhaustive study of the mental capacity of the white and dark races 
respectively had not changed his point of view at all. The only change that had been
made was in the name of his magazine. He was now writing for the La Revue Mondiale 
instead of La Revue de la Revue.

Nothing is more exhilerating and encouraging to a member of the under-estimated 
group than a talk with this great French writer who believes
head, heart and soul in the fine mental and spiritual endowment of the dark
races. Nobody has taken more pains to explore the theory of the natural superiority 
of the white race and the inevitable inferiority of the dark than
Monsieur Finot. In His large book on Race Prejudice (Les Prejuges des Races) 
contains enough facts and arguments proving the fallacy of this position to
convince any human being who thinks and is san. Nobody could take a more advanced 
stand on absolute equality between the white and black races than does
Monsieur Finot. 

When I expressed the fear that the French might learn from the large
number of Americans in their country how to discriminate against colored people
he assured me that my fears were groundless. "The French can no more learn
how to be prejudiced against human beings on account of their color than
Americans can unlearn it," he said. After writing his large volume on race
prejudice Monsieur Finot wrote a much shorter book entitled "L'Agenie et la
Mort dest Races." which his friend, Mr. William T.Stead, then editor of the
British Review of Rdviews in London translated into English under the title
"The Death Agony of the 'Science' of Race."

In this masterful presentation Monsieur Finot shows that "the good in
man is constantly leading him onward through the endless confusion caused by

[161]      181

international hatred and war towards the brotherhood of races and nations. 
The old dogmas, the effect of which was to estrange human beings," he says, 
"are crumbling to pieces and new ones are arising, whose whole burden is the
equality of all mankind." Monsieur Finot presented me with both the French edition and the
translation by Mr. Stead and gave me permission to have the English book reprinted 
in the United States.

He told me had talked with several rich Americans who had offered to
back him with money, if he would stop his"foolish prattle" about the equality
of races. A woman who is at the head of one of the large organizations in the
United States had taken the time and the pains to call on him to argue against
the stand he had taken and to convert him to her point of view. Trying to
teach Frenchmen to discriminate against colored people amounted to an obsession 
with some Americans since The World War. The proprieter of a hotel in
Nancy told me that she had been advised against accommodating colored people
and when she had allowed a colored officer to stop there she was warned that
if she adopted that as her policy no self-respecting Americans would [patron
there] patronize her. She simply shrugged her shoulders and replied, "So much the worse for
the Americans," and refused to discriminate against colored officers.
"But, Madame," she said proudly, "they came to my hotel just the same. If I
lost any guests I did not know it and I certainly did not need them."It was
an indescribable pleasure to hear the French people, old and young, men and
women sing the praises of the colored soldiers who were sent to France. It
was no use trying to explain the white American's prejudice against his colored 
countrymen to French people, for they simply could not understand it.

Through the courtesy of the Honorable Blaise Diagne Commissioner and in charge of official affairs I had the plea
pleasure of visiting the French Chamber of Deputies. Tall, very dark, straight
as an arrow, self-possessed, dignified and full of reserve power this French-African 
was a living, breathing illustration of the possibilities of his
people under favorable conditions, when given the opportunity of cultivating their brains, coupled with
the chance of reaching any height which their ability enables them to attain. 
There


182

There were five or six Africans in the Chamber of Deputies and it was
an object lesson in what may occur when black and white mingle on terms of
absolute equality and neither group is thinking about the color of the others
skin. The black and white deputies talked with each other, mingled together indiscriminately
exchanged views, laughed and joked together and every now and then one would
place his hand familiarly on the other's shoulder just as though there were no difference 
in race or color at all.

Nobody who has a drop of African blood in his veins can fail to honor
and love France on account of the way she treats her black subjects when they live
on her soil and mingle with the other citizens of that great Republic. In order 
to get first hand information [about this subject for myself] I made up my 
mind that I would stop every black Frenchman I happened to meet in the street
and talk with him myself. Each and every one of them assured me that they
were treated just like the "other Frenchmen" no matter where they went or
what they wanted to do. B
I questioned them closely about their status in France and whether they were discriminated against in any way and how they were treated on general principles. 

But a conversation  I held with one French-African cured me of this habit. 
I had asked him whether he could attend any school he chose, whether he
could be served in any restaurant he entered or accommodated in any hotel at
which he wished to stop. The more I questioned him, the more puzzled he became. 
Finally in a tone denoting that he was both puzzled and grieved, he
replied, "Mais, Madame, les Francais nous aiment. " (But Madame, the French
people love us." His attitude toward me and the tone of his voice were precisely 
what one would expect from a child who had been asked whether his mother 
and father gave him enough to eat, a clean bed to sleep in and decent
clothes to wear. His faith in the affection of the French for his group and
the testimony he so cheerfully bore to prove it convinced me that the French
really treat their dark citizens from their African colonies like brothers
and men.

For several reasons my interview with Baron Makino, Japan's representative 
at the Peach Conference at the hotel Maurice, in Paris, was indelibly stamped upon my mind.
Naturally we discussed the attitude of the proud, selfish white races toward

183

the dark. I was outspoken as usual, but the Japanese Baron was very reserved 
and conservative in his remarks, He was a diplomat to his finger rips.
It was a great relief to my pen-up feelings to tell him personally how shocked 
and sorry I was that two of the most Christian and highly-civilized races
in the world had denied racial equality to Japan which she had a right to demand. 
After that interview in the Hotel Maurice which lasted an hour and a half I felt that I had
been in the presence of a real diplomat. 

A few years after that I had an interview with Baron Naibe Kanda at
the Shoreham hotel in Washington when he was attending the Arms Limitation Conference 
here and I discussed with him the attitude which the Japanese usually assume [as a rule]
toward colored people in this country. As a rule, I told him, the Japanese
avoid colored people and seem unfriendly toward them on general principles.
Personally, I explained, I felt I could understand the reason why Japanese in 
the United States held themselves aloof from colored people. They learn, as
soon as they reach this country, that in many parts of the United States colored 
people are debarred from hotels and restaurants, are denied privileges accorded 
to other people and that nearly everywhere they are socially ostracised.
Under the circumstances, I admitted, it is quite natural that the Japanese wh
who have troubles of their own, when they reach the United States should not
want want to be closely affiliated with a group which is generally regarded as
inferior and considered undesirable in the social circles of the dominant race
Baron Kanda immediately assured me that in their own country the Japanese have absolutely 
no prejudice against colored people. They know very little about them, of
course, he said, but when colored people come among them they are received with
with the same cordiality as that accorded other races. He himself had entertained 
the Jubilee singers, he said, when they filled some engagements in Japan
He had invited them to dine with him and had them given them a reception after
wards. I prize highly a card which Baron Kanda gave me when we parted on which
he had written a sentiment in Japanese characters.

But, to return to Paris, One day while I was looking with admiration
and adoration at the statue of Joan of Arc a friend from New York greeted me
and told me that William Monroe Trotter, the editor of the Boston Guardian,


184

was in Paris and was trying to tell the French people the truth about conditions 
under which colored people live in the United States. I resolved to
see him as soon as I could and learned that a Frenchman who admired him and
believed in him had given him a desk in his office. Sure enough, therehe
was working away like a beaver.

"Have you heard what a hard time I had getting to Europe?" Mr.Trotter 
inquired. I had heard nothing about it, but when he related his story I
realized that he had not sailed to Paris on flowery beds of ease. For reasons 
best known to the officials who decided who should and who should not
be granted passports right after the World War, Mr. Trotter had been unable
to secure one. But, he was bound, bend and determined to go. Since he could
not swim across the big pond, he was at his wits end. Finally a bright
thought struck him. He would cross the ocean as a cook on a steamer. But,
alas, he didn't know how to boil water even. He could learn, couldn't he?
And that is exactly what he did. He altered his name a bit, got a job on a
steamer as a cook and reached France in due course of time right side up with care.
The rest was easy.

The National Equal Rights League had elected him as a delegate to
represent it and he was also made the Secretary of Race Petitioners to the
Peace Conference.So, as soon as he landed in Paris and had been offered a
desk in a sympathizer's office near the French Stock Exchange , he went to
work in earnest. He gave me a copy of the following letter which he had
just addressed to Mr. Wilson: Paris, May 31st, 1919. Headquarters of Delegate 
to Paris of National Equal Rights League, 10 Place de la Bourse,
Chez M. Collet. The President of the U.S.A.
Hon. Woodrow Wilson,
Maison Blance, 11, Place des Etats Unis, Paris,
Sir;

Lawlessness and mob murder against citizens of
color continue to take place in our common country, the U.S.A. This was so
while the world peace agreement was being written. Day before yesterday,
while the Entente Allies were waiting for the peace treaty to be signed by
Germany, a man of color was taken by the mob from the Court House itself,
in the State of Missouri, and lynched in the Court House yard, after the
Court had decided that life imprisonment was the punishment due the victim
for killing officers when arrested.

Yesterday here in France in your Memorial Day address at the graves

185
of American soldiers you declared: "I stand consecrated to the lads sent
here to die." Moany of them were lads of color, gallant and loyal, fighting
for France, for civilisation and for world democract. Will you, therefore,
for their sakes and that they should not have died in vain, grant to their
king and race at home protection of rights and of life in the world peace
agreement? And will you not at once send a special message to Congress recommending
that lynching be made a crime against the Federal Government?
This request is made in the name of the National Equal Rights League whose
elected delegate to Paris I am.
Yours for World Democracy, William Trotter, Delegate to Paris and 
Secretary of Race Petitioners to Peace Conference.
Shortly after the armistice was signed there was a riot in the National
Capital, started, it is claimed, by marines who didn't like to see colored
men wearing the uniforms of soldiers so cockily about the streets and 
who wanted to teach them to keep their place. My life was in danger on
that occasion as was that of the members of my family and all the other colored
people in the city. The slightest pretext for shooting any colored person
would have been considered sufficient excuse for any member of the negro-hating,
negro baiting mob to commit murder. I shot was fired into the 
house of one of my friends, a widow which came from the second story of a 
house across the street. Mr. Arthur Spingarn, a member of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, came from New York to secure 
some facts concerning this riot and asked me to go with him to his destination.
As we walked along a street on which many colored people lived,
one of my friends told me that the feeling against white people was running
so high on account of the brutal manner in which they had beaten, shot and 
other wise maltreated assaulted colored people, it was not safe for us to be seen together
and advised me to return home. But we continued on our wau till we 
reached the 9the precinct so that we might ask the captain whether it was true that [? heard from the lips of the captain that]
colored men were being arrested by policemen and beaten badly after they
the rumor of the beatings administered by policement to colored men in the
were placed in the station house cells. Reluctantly he admitted thay such
outrages had occurred.

187
In several cities of the South at least six colored soldiers were lynched
by white people because they objected to having colored men wear the 
uniform of a United States soldier.
These and other incidents show that William Monroe Trotter was justified
in trying to do something which would ameliorate the condition of his
race, while he had an opportunity to spread propaganda in their behalf in
Paris.
While I was in the French capital a big.allopathic dose of race prejudice
was administered to me by Government officials stationed there.
I wanted very much to take a trip through the devastated sections of France
which was offered citizens "in good standing" by the Government and arranged 
by the Visitors Bureau. Nearly all of the delegates to the Peace Congress
with whom I had crossed the ocean had taken the trip. I had not been invited 
to go with the party, not because any member of it would have objected to my
presence, but because they probably took it for granted that the discrimination
against colored people in the United States under similar circumstances
would quite likely be displayed by its citizens in France. In other words a 
taboo on anything which might be twisted to mean "social equality" for colored 
Americans would undoubtedly "follow the flag".
[?] I observed that very broad-minded white people who have no
prejudice against colored people [should? ?] cause trouble unwittingly by
raising the issue themselves by asking questions about colored people whom
they have invited to accompany them somewhere. If they want a colored person
to take a meal with them at a restaurant or at a hotel for instance they feel
in duty bound to go to the proprietor to inquire whether he will serve colored
people or not. This very questions raised the ugly issues which the proprietor
may never have had to meet before and which promptly [?] him out of 
a year's growth. In a sort of paroxysm of fear he quickly states that he can
not serve colored people in his place. In ninety nine cases out of one hundred
the probability is that if the white individual had asked no questions about 
the policy pursued by the proprietor with reference to colored people and had
gone calmly into the dining room with his colored friend, his [?] guest

188
would have been served. It seldom happens that a colored person accompanied by
a white friend is excluded from a dining room in the North, East or West.
I do not know whether or not the other delegates to the Peace Congress asked 
the officials in the Visitors Bureau in Paris whether there would be any objection
to having a colored woman accompany them on the trip and were told there 
would be. I simply know I was not invited to go with them when they went.
Although I wanted very much to avail myself of the opportunity of seeing
the devastated sections of France, I did not so express myself to the party.
I carefully concealed my feelings [disappointment] from my companions. The evening they
were scheduled to return I had a nice little lunch waiting for them, because I
thought they would be too tired to order a meal for themselves, and I listened
to the report of what they saw without showing how disappointed I was that I
had not gone.
I made up my mind, however, that I would do my level best to get a 
chance to go. Suiting the action to the thought about the last of April I went to the Visitor's Bureau
Bureau to prefer my request. A friend employed there told me he felt certain
I could go at the Government's expense just as the others had gone. I presented
my credentials to a red-headed young man who asked for them and who seemed very favourably impressed
with me indeed. [He asked for credentials and] I gave him the original
letter written to me by Mr. George Dickie, Field Director for the War Camp
Community Service in which he complimented my summary of conditions in some
southern cities I had been sent to visit. The young man took it, and made two
copies of it, giving me one and retaining one himself. Captain Platt, one of 
the Higher Ups in the Visitor's Bureau, came in person to the Hotel Continental
and not finding me there wrote me a note telling me to be ready to take the
trip to the devastated section the following Thursday, May 1st.
But late Thursday afternoon, when I had packed a few things together
and was already to start, I received a telephone message saying that the 
trip had been given up and that I would hear from the Visitor's Bureau later.
But nary a word from the Visitor's Bureau did I hear. This was a great disappointment
to me. I had remained at the Hotel Continental a whole week- rather 
an expensive procedure at that time- so as to be in Paris long enough to gon 

189
on that trip. Soon afterward I was obliged to leave Paris to go to Zurich
Switzerland to attend the Peace Congress.
When I returned to Paris after the Congress had adjourned, I resolved
to try once more to get to the devastated section, feeling reasonably sure I
would be granted that privilege, since Captain Platt had [?]
[?] promise with me that I might take the trip later on. It is
barely possible, however, that the Captain might have thought that after I lef
Paris I would not return, so there would be no "later on" pledge to come back
to tease him. Presenting myself at the Visitor's Bureau again I saw the same
red-headed young man who had received me so cordially when I made my first appearance 
before him. I would not refer to the color of the young man's hair,
if I knew his name or was certain what position he held. I might add that I
like red hair very much.
How this young man's attitude toward me had changed. O, what a fall, my
countrymen., or words to that effect. The moment I began to talk with him I
knew the awful secret had leaked out. Either he had used his own eyes more effectively
than he had at first or he had been informed from others the damning fact of my African
descent. When I first appeared at the Bureau, and [He was positively rude to me and] my racial identity was not suspected
[and] I was most cordially received by the young man with the lurid locks
He was eager to have me take the trip and was very courteous indeed. Now, after
 the great light had dawned upon him he was positively rude. He told me
very positively that they did not intend to arrange for any more trips.
I replied that Captain Platt had definitely promised that I could take the
trip, that I had remained a whole week at the Hotel Continental expecting every
day that I would be notified I could go, but had been disappointed.
"Well, we are not taking any more people," I tell you," he said angrily.
"You are discriminating against me because I am a colored woman," I replied.
"We dont stand for any such discriminations against this office," he snapped, 
glaring at me fiercely trying to intimidate me. "And I dont stand for any such
treatment," I said. "You are discriminating against me, because I am a colored
woman," I repeated. "I dont care what you think," he said, as he raised

190

his voice and grew so red in the race that his complexion matched his hair
exactly. Then he strode angrily out of the room and entered what was evidently
a private office. I did not see him any more.

After waiting a very long time another young man entered the office
and asked innocently "Are you being attended to?" I "I want to see Captain
Platt," I replied. "Well, I don't know whether Captain Platt is here or not,"
he said doubtfully, but I'll try to find him. Pretty soon Captain Silsby, who
acted and talked like a gentleman came into the room and asked me very courteously
what I wanted. I related the conversation between the young man and myself.
"Captain Platt will be here soon, I think," he said reassuringly.

In a short while Captain Platt really arrived. He was very dignified 
and stern, when I told him he had definitely promised to let me take the trip
which the Government had given others and that I had come to request him to
do so. "We are not sending anybody else on those trips," he said icily.

"Then you mean to say," I replied, "that although you promised to let me
take the trip which many other Americans have taken, you now refuse to do so."
You can not go." he said. "Well, so let it be," I said, scarcely above a
whisper in a tone tense with indignation and feeling. Then I quickly left the
room. Even if I tried I could not describe the emotions which surged within
me.

The following day I saw Captain Boutte, a colored officer stationed
in the Visitor's Bureau who spoke French fluently and he told me I would
hear definitely the next day whether I could take the trip or not. Since Captain
Platt had stated positively that I could not go, I was very much surprised
to learn that there was even a remote possibility that their decision would
be reversed. The stern captain evidently relented, for the trip was arranged
and Captain Boutte was designated as my guide. Thus it was that I saw the devastated
sections of France, the terrible destruction of the villages and towns,
the miles upon miles of the wicked barbed wire with which the fields had been
interlaced and the beautiful, age-old structures which hed been shot to pieces
it was pathetic but heartening to see the wonderful industry and the fixed,

191

grim determination of the French who had already started to repair the awful
destruction which had been wrought.

These who saw the [Arg?nn?] Forest right after the World War must have been
impressed with the fact that the Germans felt absolutely certain that they
would win it. They had converted it into a regular town with cemented houses,
some of them prettily decorated. There was a grand stand in which the soldiers
could listen to band concerts and a regular tiled bath room for a Royal Highness.
The little spades and pewter spoons left by the Germans were still to be
seen lying here and there on the ground where their owners had left them, and I
took the trouble to bring several of them home with me.

In the Argonne Forest I plucked a piece of ivy
which grew near the grave of an American soldier and although I carried it about
with me a long time for many miles from pillar to poet, several pieces of it
survived, so that in two places I have living things to remind me constantly
of France - a French ivy vine which climbs up the front wall of my residence
in Washington and which clings to the front of my summer home. near Annapolis
on Chesapeake Bay, where the Naval Academy is located.

I was glad I had struggled against the exhibition of race prejudice exhibited
by my white countrymen in France and finally had an opportunity to
see for myself what it would have been a tragedy for me to miss and to gain
invaluable information which I could have received in no other way. Incidentally
it was an object lesson in the horrors of war which I can never forget.

192

A Week End Visit with Mr. and Mrs. H. G. Wells.
Get Acquainted with Other Distinguished People in England.

One morning while I was at the Hotel Continental in Paris, before I had
started for the Peace Congress at [Eurich?], I received a letter from Mrs. H. G
Wells extending me a cordial invitation to be their guest after I returned
from Switzerland on my way to the United States. The newspapers had given
the delegates a great deal of publicity, so that it was not difficult for
anybody who wished to communicate with them get our address, If there had
been the slightest suspicion in my mind that the invitation to visit her
was merely perfunctory or that it had been extended just for the sake of politeness,
it would have been dispelled when I reached Zurich. For there I
found another letter from Mrs. Wells who had sent me the second one addressed
to the American Express Company in Paris which she knew would forward it
to the [???????????????????????????], for fear that the first one might not
reach me while I was in Paris.

She intrusted me to notify her as soon as I reached London after the
Congress adjourned for she wanted very much to have me come out to see her.
Consequently the first thing I did after reaching London was to write Mrs.
Wells requesting her to command me when she wanted me to come. By return
mail I received a reply stating that Mrs. Wells wished me to be at a certain
station between London and [Dunm?w] on a certain Saturday afternoon in
June.

To an American unaccustomed to travelling in England conditions are
bewildering in a huge station like the Liverpool, when she tries to buy a
ticket for a small place at which trains stop only by request. After finding
the right train one has to keep a sharp look out to avoid going several
stations beyond the one at which she wishes to detrain, for [??????lls]
out small stations in England. But the fates were with me and when I left
the train I found Mrs. Wells waiting for me. Lithe and willowy of form, gracious,
vivacious, smiling and charming in manner Mrs. Wells looked younger
than she did in a photo she had sent me of herself and her two little sons
fifteen years previously.

193

No one could have received a more cordial greeting than was given me by
Mrs. Wells. "We will wait a few minutes," she said, "for I am expecting two
other guests on this train." Just as she had finished saying this a young man
on crutches with a young woman by his side approached us. I was then introduced
to Mrs. and Mr. St. John Ervine, a well-known, promising, young English
playwright and novelist whose plays have enjoyed a merited success both in
England and in the United States. He had lost his leg in the World War, but
apparently it had not affected his spirit in the least.

After her guests had seated themselves in the automobile Mrs. Wells
proved herself to be a first class chauffeur and she whisked us to her home in the twinkling
of an eye. When Mrs. Wells opened the gate through which the auto passed
I saw we were entering a typical English estate covering I dont know how many
acres of land, which I learned later had been leased from [???????] the
[??????????] I shall not attempt to give an extended or an accurate
description of the house in which Mr. and Mrs. Wells were then living, except
to say that it contained everything which comfort and good taste could suggest.
But I do want to refer to the library. I could gush like a school about
that.

It was literally a dream - a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It was an
unusually large room extending half way across the house, having at
least three doors and I don't know how many windows through which the light
streamed in floods. As soon as one stepped into the hall and entered Mr. Well
Wells' home, one saw this most inviting, and alluring room with tufted divans,
big and little chairs artistically upholstered plus books and magazines
galore. But a great disappointment awaited a guest who expected to find any of
Mr. Wells' books [????] handy. They were conspicuous by their absence.
After casting about with the determination to find one at least, I finally discovered
a small one in which [??????] heat-author described a trip to Mars.

Mr. Wells did not arrive from London until, fifteen minutes before dinner.
It was hard to believe I was actually looking at a man who had won such
fame as a writer and about when I had been hearing for such a long time. Dont
ask me how the English people keep looking so young. But they seem to find

194

the fountain of youth somehow and never grow old. There was H. G. Wells in
the flesh, beaming upon his guests, extending them a most cordial welcome
to his home, grasping their hands warmly, as ruddy, as lively and as approachable
as a man could possibly be. Mr. Wells is without doubt the most unaffected,
the most human and the most unassuming man in the whole world.

We had had tea on the lawn where Mr. Wells arrived with Mrs. Lamont,
wife of Mr. Thomas Lamont, who had just bought the New York Evening Post from
Oswald Garrison Villard, the grandson of William Lloyd Garrison, who was also
the European representative of J. Pierpont Morgan's firm and was also a valued member
of President Woodrow Wilson's party in the Paris Conference on the League of
Nations. Mr. Lamont had to take a long automobile ride to reach Mr. Wells'
estate.

I shall never cease to regret that I had not learned stenography before
I became a member of that house party, so that for my own sake I might have
recorded some of the clever remarks and bons mots of those interesting, well-
informed and delightful people gathered for three days and nights under one
roof, at one table and then after dinner in a circle for the whole evening.
Not that I might publish them broadcast to the world, but it might refresh
my memory in the sear and yellow leaf and live over those delightful
hours again.

Mr. Wells was as fine an example of perpetual motion as one could met
meet in a day's march. He will never grow old. He seemed never to tire and
was never happier than when he was engaged in some kind of physical exercise. I saw
him play the game of ball described in "Mr. Brittling Sees It Through" an entire
morning then later on he played tennis on the Countess of Warwick's estate
the whole afternoon without showing the slightest signs of fatigue. In
playing the game of ball Mr. Wells would take one guest as his partner till
he tired him out and then he would go for another until he was exhausted too.

Strolling through his spacious grounds was another kind of recreation
which Mr. Wells thoroughly enjoyed, He took pleasure in showing his guests his
rose garden which happened to be in bloom the beautiful Sunday morning in June

195

June he showed it to me and we went to his vegetable garden while we walking
through the grounds. It was during this stroll that I condided to Mr. Wells
I was thinking about writing the story of my life and calling it "The Confessions
of a Colored Woman." "I like the title," he said immediately. It will be
be widely read in England. But write it dispassionately. "I have tried to follow
the advice of this distinguished author, my good friend, as best I could.

While I was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. H. G. Wells, the Countess of
Warwick whom I had met in London fifteen years previously when I was returning home from
from the International Congress of Women in Berlin and whom I had met again
while she was lecturing in the United States invited us all to tea. Sunday afternoon.
The baby who was only three months old when I first met the Countess
had grown to be a beautiful, young woman and one of the pleasant experiences
of my visit was playing a rather excited game of ball with this little Lady
Mercy Grevills in Mr. H. G. Wells gymnasium one morning.

The Contess asked me to sit beside her while the delicious refreshments
were being served and without doing anything which smacked of patronizing her
guest she showed she was genuinely interested in me.

On the Countess of Warwick's estate was a cage of monkeys of which their
mistress was very fond. She sometimes went into their cage, she said, and they
they knew her very well. The Countess was also very fond of dogs and carried
a favorite pekinese in her arms wherever she went. Being fond of dogs myself
I felt that this made the bond between us still stronger.

On several occasions I met personally Sir Harry Johnston, the noted
explorer, author, painter and pioneer in British colonization in
Africa. I heard him speak when he presided at a dinner given by the African
Society of which he was president. I prize very highly a pamphlet entitled
"The Africa of the Immediate Future. which Sir Harry wrote and presented to
me with the following note on the cover: Mrs Mary Church Terrell from the
Author. When you get back to the States you should read my novel, The Gay Dombeys,
published by McMillan and Co., New York.

several years Mr. John H. Harris, the parliamentary secretary

77

to my entire satisfaction that both because of excellence of record and length
of service the promotion rightfully belonged to her. I was at the breakfast
table, when I received this information and I had already sent my recommendation
to the Superintendent to promote the teacher recommended by the Supervising
Principal, but who I was convinced did not deserve it. It was just a
few minutes before nine. School was about to begin and I had no phone. Few private
individuals had phones then and there was no time for me to reach the
Superintendent in person to instruct him to change the recommendation I had
already sent in. But it occurred to me that there was a phone at Freedmen's
Hospital which was about four blocks from our residence. Grabbing my coat 
and hat I ran nearly every step of the way to the hospital, rushed to the
phone and reached the Superintendent just as he was sending a messenger to
notify the teacher who did not deserve it that she had been promoted. It is
unnecessary to state that the teacher whose excellence of record and longevity
entitled her to the promotion received it.

At that time it was a violation of the rules for a woman-teacher to marry
and retain her position in the schools. Marriage automatically severed a woman-
teacher from the service. One day an acquaintance who had taught in a white
school in a Western city came to tell me that a certain teacher in my Division
was married. She presented facts which convinced me she was telling the truth.

I urged her not to make the matter public, until I had had a chance to
talk to the teacher. At first this teacher denied it vehemently. But when I
convinced her that I had the facts in my possession, and that I knew she had
been married in Baltimore five months previously, she confessed the truth.
I promised the teacher that I would not divulge her secret, if she would resign
at the end of the month, and that thus no sensation would be created
in the schools. She took my advice and to throw the public off the scent,
she had a wedding at her home, after she resigned, so that no one would suspect
that she had violated the rule by marrying and continuing to teach.

As I look back upon my record on the School Board, I am happy in the belief
that I did everything in my power to promote the welfare of the pupils,

The Secretary of [?] Suspends Order Dismissing Colored Soldiers at
My Request.
Just as I left the Fall River Boat from New York one morning to take the
train from Boston  I read the glaring headlines of a newspaper which stated
that President Roosevelt had dismissed without honor three companies of colored
soldiers who had been accused of shooting up Brownsville, Texas, where they
were stationed. I could scarcely believe my eyes.  Although rumors had been
floating around Washington for several days before I left home that the President
might take such drastic action, few believed he would do so.  If my heart
had been weak, I should have had an attack of heart failure right then and there.
When I reached Boston I got in touch with Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson
immediately and went to see him.  He had commanded the colored soldiers of
the First South Carolina Volunteers in[?] war and was a well known champion 
of their race.  Colonel Higginson regretted that such terrible punishment
had ben inflicted upon the soldiers, but he was quite irritated with me, because
I did not see in this incident indisputable evidence of the marvellous
progress the race had made.  The fact that the colored soldiers refused to tattle 
on each other, even if they know who the culprits were, convinced Colonel
Higginson that they had greatly improved since the Civil War.  When I commanded
them in the South, he said, I feared that colored men would never learn to
stick together and be loyal to each other, because they were so treacherous to
to representatives of their own race.  But, if the colored soldiers really shot up
Brownsville and they can be neither forced nor bribed to reveal who did it,
they have taken a long step forward.  I am so glad to see the progress they have
made in this respect,  I do not worry very much about the drastic order the
President has issued.  "The Conspiracy of Silence" for which the colored soldiers
at Brownsville were so severely condemned by many was not charged against them
as a crime by [?] inel Higginson at all.
Shortly after I reached home from a lecture tour in New England the telephone
rang one morning about ten o'clock.  It had just been installed, after we
had urged the Telephone Company for several months to give us service.  It st
tled me, for I did not know that workmen had finished the job.

In my Freshman year
In my Freshman year I attended the Bible Class regularly and believe it benefitted
me greatly.  I really looked forward to it with enthusiasm and pleasure, because I was allowed
to ask questions about passages in the Scriptures which troubled
me.  And no [?] came near shaking my faith in the justice of God than tha
one which states, "I [?] God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity
of fathers upon thee children unto the third and fourth generation of 
them that hate and shewing mercy unto thousands of them who love me and
keep my commandments."  I could not understand why a just and loving father should [could] make
innocent children suffer for the sins of committed by their foreparents, The
injustice of the law of heredity stunned me.  It seemed terrible to me that
the children of drunkards should inherit a tendency to drink immoderately/and
that the children of thieves [?] have a hard time to be honest and so on
through the category of vices.  The teacher was patient with me and did his
best to show me why such a dispensation was just, but I was never able to
see it in that light.  However, I decided not to try to understand it any
longer.  I am finite, I 

see it in that light.  However, I decided not to try to understand it any
longer.  I finally brought a semblance of peace to my mind by saying I am finite and if I understood
all the plans of the Infinite I should be equal to Him in Wisdom and
which would be unthinkable and absurd, of course.  Even so my poor, little
brain often whirled and my poor little heart was often sad, as I wrestled
with the problem of heredity.





197

Mrs. Celeridge-Taylor and her two children after a separation of fifteen
years. Each of the children has inherited the talent and taste for music from
both of their parents. Here was an illustration of what unusual heridity does
in some cases, at least. The father was a genius and the mother an accomplished
musician also. Both before and after marriage Mrs. Celeridge-Taylor who had
a voice of great sweetness and power sang in recitals often accompanied on the violin 
or piano by her famous composer-husband. 

77

to my entire satisfaction that both because of excellence of record and length 
of service the promotion rightfully belonged to her. I was at the breakfast 
table, when I received this information and I had already sent my recommendation 
to the Superintendent to promote the teacher recommended by the Supervising 
Principal, but who I was convinced did not deserve it. It was just a 
few minutes before nine. School was about to begin and I had no phone. Few private 
individuals had phones then and there was no time for me to reach the 
Superintendent in person to instruct him to change the recommendation I had 
already sent in. But it Occurred to me that there was a phone at Freedmen's 
Hospital which was about four blocks from our residence. Grabbing my coat 
and hat I ran nearly every step of the way to the hospital, rushed to the 
phone and reached the Superintendent just as he was sending a messenger to 
notify the teacher who did not deserve it that she had been promoted. It is 
unnecessary to state that the teacher whose excellence of record and longevity 
entitled her to the promotion received it.    

At that time it was a violation of the rules for a woman-teacher to marry 
and retain her position in the schools. Marriage automatically severed a woman-
teacher from the service. One day an acquaintance who had taught in a white 
school in a Western city came to tell me that a certain teacher in my Division 
was married. She presented facts which convinced me she was telling the truth. 

I urged her not to make the matter public, until she had had a chance to 
talk to the teacher. At first this teacher denied it vehemently. But when I 
convinced her that I had the facts in my possession, and  that I knew she had 
been married in Baltimore five months previously, she confessed the truth. 
I promised the teacher that I would not divulge her secret, if she would resign 
at the end of the month, and that thus no sensation would be created 
in the schools. She took my advice and to throw the public off the scent, 
she had a wedding at her home, after she resigned, so that no one would suspect 
that she had violated the rule by marrying and continuing to teach. 

As I look back upon my record on the School Board, I am happy in the belief that I did everything in my power to promote the welfare of the pupils,

2
Queen of all Puddings, the recipe for which was found in a little paperback
book given away by the Crisco Company which was just beginning to distribute 
this product.  By the time I had corraled all the ingredients for the
turkey and the pudding I am sure I had walked ten miles.  I have always regretted
that I did not have a speedometer that day, so as to prove that I 
walked that distance, at least.  In the afternoon, my husband attended a foot ball game and
returned about six expecting to find dinner ready, but he was disappointed.  The oven
did not seem to want to bake the things.  He went off and returned later, but
still the Queen of All puddings was not yet done.  I tried to keep up appearances
and look uncerned, but my morale was completely destroyed.
Finally, about nine o'clock one of our friends- a husband and wife called
to see us, and although it was very humiliating to me, I related my tale of
woe.  The good woman said she would look at the stove to see what was the 
matter.  And when she did so, she discovered that the portion under the oven
was just as full of ashes as it could possibly be.  Nothing in the world
could cook in such an oven, she declared.  And if that were not bad enough, I
had turned the damper the wrong way.  About ten o'clock Thanksgiving night
we sat down to our dinner, a more wretched, tired and disgusted woman than
I was could not have been found in the United States.  I managed to restrain
the tears and that was all.  I certainly was not cheerful at the meal.
My husband [enjoyed teasing me and he never tired talking about that] was a great tease and he enjoyed nothing more than talking about that 
wonderful Thanksgiving dinner which it took me twelve hours to cook and he
[Queen of all Puddings which never got done. He frequently referred to me as]
frequently referred to me as "The Queen of All Puddings" for many years.
Both my mother and my father were very hospitable and I inherited
that trait from them.  But I dreaded having company for dinner like a tooth
ache, because something was always sure to go wrong, when I did, no matter
how hard I tried to having everything right.  Once I invited four young men
to dinner a few years after we had gone to housekeeping.  [*of them*] They were the sons
of fine caterers and one of them was the son of a man who had kept one of
the best hotels in Boston, so they all knew what a good dinner was.  I tried 
to make that meal absolutely perfect and I thought I had succeeded.
I had made some delicious ice cream myself.  In that I excelled the father said
I had


3
But I observed that the young men simply tasted it and let it go at that.
I did not care for ice cream, so I had instructed the girl who was serving
not to bring me any.  Chagrined that my guests did not touch their dessert
I went into the kitchen after dinner to discover the reason.  It did not take
me long to do this, for the minute I tasted it I rralized that it was full
of coal oil.  The young girl who had frozen the cream confessed that she had
poured coal oil into the holes placed in the freezer to lubricate it- had
poured a good deal of it into the holes, she said, because she thought the
job would be easier for her.
When I invited Samuel Coleridge Taylor the great composer to dinner another tragedy occurred
He said he liked oysters, and was especially fond of oyster soup, so I decided
to have some.  In those halcyon days it was possible for me to have a real
sure enough cook, for they did not receive fifty and sixty dollars a month
for their services then.  I am glad they can get a living wage now, even if
I can not afford to have such a luxury.  This particular cook was an expert
at making oyster soup, so it was unnecessary I thought to give her any directions or hold
any conference on the subject.  But, when the soup [it] reached the table it was so badly
curdled, it looked for all the world like dish water- dirty dish water
at that.  The cook was never able to explain what happened.  She had never
failed before and she never failed afterwards, but she certainly did embarrass
me when she placed that curdled oyster soup before the distinguished composer.
The second time Mr. Coleridge-Taylor came to the United States I invited
him to dine with me again.  This time some evil jinx put it into my 
head to have lamb chops.  The butcher from whom we were accustomed to get them
had always sent us good ones, so my husband simply ordered them as he had
been accustomed to do.  That afternoon I went out with my guest and returned
just in time for dinner.  When the chops were brought into the dining room,
they were as tough as whet leather and we could scarcely eat them.
Just one other incident to show why I dreaded to invite guests to a 
meal.  Mrs. Mary McCleod Bethune who was then President of the National
Association of Colored Women and is now president of Bethune -Cookman College
in Daytona Beach Florida came to Washington once and I invited her to stop

[*4*]

with me. Assisting me in my home at that time was a young woman from South Carolina whom I
had sent through the High School and who was about to complete her course
in the Normal School. She was absolutely dependable in every way and quite
a good cook. I explained to her that I was especially anxious to have every
thing pass off well, while Mrs. Bethune was my guest, because she had treated
me so handsomely while I was with her in Florida. My dearly-beloved 
[??ula?] promised me that she would do her level best. I bought a chicken frm
from a dealer who assured me that it was as tender as a broiler. It did not
exactly look the part and I had my doubts, but the man assured me that it
was all right. However, I wrote a note for Eula, just before I left home to
attend a meeting, in which I advised her to parboil the chicken, if she had
the slightest suspicion that it was not tender enough to roast as it was.
I also suggested that she should get some ice cream for dessert, so that
she would not be bothered with making it herself.

When Mrs. Bethune and I sat down to dinner, the chicken was so tough we
could hardly eat any part of it. Eula had not parboiled it, as I had advised
her to do. Naturally I expected to have ice cream for dessert, but instead
of the ice cream Eula brought us something, the like of which I had
never seen before and have never beheld since. She had decided to make a tapioca pudding in which she
was an expert, because she added some demi-semi-quayer to it, which made it
particularly good. But the concoction which she set before us looked like
a piece of brown parchment and it tasted like it too. We could not eat that
either. Eula explained this sad failure to me by saying that she had tried to make
the pudding particularly good and had injected into it more of something
than she usually did and had ruined it completely.

When I first went to housekeeping I enjoyed it. I studied all the
new notions, attended Mrs. Rorer's lectures on cooking and made a business of
keeping up with the times. But, when I began my public work I realized that I was seriously handicapped because 
I had to teach myself to cook and had never been in the kitchen with a
woman who was efficient and willing to show me just how many things were done
I followed the cook book slavishly and did not dare to add or subtract

[*5*]

anything from a recipe, as some of my friends who had enjoyed such training
wither in their own home or in somebody else's kitchen were able to do.

I balked at nothing which had to be done in the home. With the little assistance
which I received occasionally from the children and my helper I gave each of
four rooms originally finished in oak four coats of ivory paint. When anything
needed a coat varnish, or the floors had to be stained, I did that.

The parlor furniture which we bought when we went to housekeeping began
finally to look worn and needed repairing. But when I got an estimate for the
job it was more than I felt I could afford. so I decided to do it myself.
With the assistance of a young seamstress I upholstered those five pieces of
furniture, so that my father who was by no means easy to please declared that
it looked as though it had been done by an expert. I learned to tie up the
springs in sofas or chairs when they sagged and could do odd jobs in carpentering
fairly well.

My mother was very proud of my [????] and was boasting of of my skill in
canning, reserving and doing other stunts to Mr. Lewie Douglass, son of
Frederick Douglass, whom she met in the car one day. But the manner in which
Mr. Douglass received this information took Mother back considerably. Instead
of enthusing over the fact that I spent so much time and strength in doing
such work, Mr. Douglass who was one of my best friends, stated in no uncertain
terms that he thought I was making a great mistake. He thought it was a pity,
he said, that I could not devote more of my time and strength upon the work
for which I had been trained and which I seemed to enjoy doing. Public work of
various kinds was my forte, he believed. There were comparitively few colored
women at that time who could discharge these duties, he said, and if the few
who could were going to use themselves up in doing drudgery, the race would be
the loser and the sufferer in the end. Try to persuade your daughter to use
her head he said and let others whose brains have not been trained use their hands.

Mother was very much impressed with Mr. Douglass's advice, for she had
often expressed an opinion similar to his herself. But the duties which pressed
had to be done, and often there was no one to do them but myself. Even though

[*6*]

though I had a helper for the kitchen for many years, there were numerous things
about the home which like other women I had to attend to myself. After my
dear mother came to live with me I was relieved of much responsibility and I
was able to leave home to fill lecture engagements, occasionally which I could never have
done but for her presence in my home. But Mother was not well and it was difficult
for her to walk, so that I would not allow her to do any manual labor
if I could prevent it.

After having enjoyed housekeeping for many years it finally began to
pall on my taste. I regretted that in meeting its insistent, continuous demands
I had been unable to direct more of my energy into channels toward
which my inclination and my aptitude beckoned. and in which I believe I would
have been able to render greater service to my race. While I can not help
wishing that much of the time spent in cooking, dishwashing, sweeping, dusting,
painting and sewing had been consumed in doing the work which I believe
would have advanced the interests of my race and which I longed to do. Still I am thankful that a
kind Providence made it possible for me to render even the small service
which I have been able to give in behalf of my group. 

5

He was frequently requested to recite at meetings held for various
purposes. And it was always interesting to hear him relate his experiences
I used to tell him that he had missed his calling and that he should have
after he returned home. He was a great mimic. He had a keen sense of the
gone on the stage, "you think I should have been an end man,"I presume,
ludicrous, and he could enjoy a joke on himself as much as one on anybody
else.

Once he recited at a meeting in New York City where the higher education
for the Negro was to be discussed. Naturally Paul Dunbar believed 
most enthusiastically in the higher education of the Negro. A man who had
gone to that meeting intending to oppose it, but after he heard Paul recite
he subscribed $1000 to the fund. "Little did that man known," said Paul
relating the incident that I had never been beyond the High School of Dayton.

[Tha?a?a?] sore disappointment to Paul Dunbar that he could not go to college.
He tried several times to make arrangements to take a course in college
and once he thought he had succeeded, but he failed. He has discussed
his inability to go to college with me many times and he always expressed
deep regret that his plan to do so had been upset.

More than once I have heard him tell how surprised were some of the help at
the hotels at which arrangements had been made for him to stop, by those who when they
had engaged him to read his poems.
saw him appear with his dark face in the flesh. He would mimic to perfection
the consternation written on the face of when they saw him
a colored porter or a waiter who saw him, a black man, walk up to the
desk of a fine hotel, register, and a brazen image would have laughed at Paul
when he imitated the depicted the expression on the faces of the colored help, when they
saw him assigned to the best room in the house. "How did you get these rooms
a colored waiter once asked him at a fine hotel. Miss Helen Gould occupied these
rooms last week. Guess somebody must have seen the proprietor about it"
When relating such an incident
of course Paul used the broken English in which the conversation was carried
on by the colored man who couldn't understand how a black man could see
ours accommodations in a fine hotel. In acting the park he would make the gestures, strike the
poses and shake his head exactly until one felt one could see man whose was representing and the scene
part he was acting standing before him. As a rule Paul told these experiences
to amuse those to whom they were related, but sometimes I sued to observe
that they got under his skin, so to speak, "My position is a most un-

A Visit to the World's Fair.

[*??? Douglass Paul Dunbar at the World's Fair*]

My father invited me to visit the World's Fair, while he and his family
were tehre, and paid [*generously8] the expenses of my trip. The Midway Plaisance with
all its oriental denizens and dancers was something decidedly new under the
sun and many [*perfect ladies*] there were who went to see them perform only to come away [*very much*] shocked.
Compared with what one commonly sees on the stage in this country to day,, however, those
exotic ladies knew nothing but the A.B.C. of sending thrills down the spinal
column [*by ???? ???? ?????*] of American sight-seeers. Chicago was only an overgrown village
when the World's Fair was held there to celebrate the 400th anniversary of
the discovery of America by Columbus [*a year later than it should have been*] 
and [*it*] was not the mammoth, sitrring metropolis of the West that it now is.

The exhibits sent from practically every civilized country in
the world instructed and fascinated me beyond expression and I never tired looking at them.
But there are two recollections which have left the delightful flavor in my memory
was the honor paid to the great Frederick Douglass by the people of
the dominant race as well as by own his group. The other was meeting Paul-
Laurence Dunbar, just as he was starting on his career as
a poet. Mr. Douglass was the Commissioner in charge of the exhibit from Hayti at the World's
Fair and he employed Paul Dunbar to assist him. Mr. Douglass had the habit
of entertaining his friends at the Fair by giving them a few hours of
his valuable time taking them to see the exhibits which he especially liked.
Pursuant to this custom he invited me to go with him one afternoon to
take in some of the sights. As we walked along either through the grounds or
in the buildings Mr. Douglass was continually halted by admiring people
who begged the privilege of shaking hands with him. A mother would stop
him and say, "You are Frederick Douglass, aren't you Please shake hands 
with my little son, because when he grows up I
want him to say that he has met and shaken hands with the great Frederick
Douglass." Let's get on the scenic railway," suggested Mr. Douglass so
that we may have a chance to talk a little. Nobody can get us there."
But he reckoned without his host, for we had no sooner taken seats on
that little railroad than a man reached over two seats to touch him on

Up To Date
Mary Church Terrell.
July 14, 1928.

In Eddyville, Kentucky, not long ago seven men died in the chair, all
of them murderers. Four were white and three were not. It is not to tell
the story of the murders that this paragraph is written, but to call attention
 to the manner in which the white men went to their doom. The new
papers tell me that the negroes recovered their spirits to a greater degree 
than the white men before the time came for them to pass down the
corridor of steel and stone that connects the death house with the chair
room. The account also states that the "condemned men" (referring to
the white men) "were reduced by fear to a condition bordering on collaps[e]
as midnight approached. [w]ith heads supperted in cupped hands, they sat s[i]lent, 
their bodies shaken by chills despite the intense heat." 

One of the condemned, not [w]hite, said nothing, another entered the
chamber singing, and the last of the three h[um]med a song as he paid clos[e]
attention to the manner in which the straps were adjusted." What a fine
illustration of the difference between the courage displayed by white an[d]
that displayed by men who are not white this would have been, if the tabl[?]
had been turned. If the white men had gone to the chair humming and singing 
or in a dignified silence and the men who were not white had collapse[?]
and shivered, the newspaper reporters would have played up the courage
of the white men magnificently and contract [?] in strong language with
the fear and the collapse of Negroes. 

Over and over again the non-white men of this country have proved that
they are not weaklings either physically or [???]ally. During the Spanish-
American war with superhuman courage they saved the day at [?] and San Juan Hill by rushing over the prostrate
forms of white soldiers who had fallen in abject fear. Then they were allowed 
to fight in the Civil War, [?] of their race were
still held body and soul in the chains of slavery, one of their white officers
said, "So far from being inferior to the white soldiers, the colored
solders are in some respect [??festly] superior. They have an inherent
fire and dash about them which white troops of more sluggish Northern
blood do not emulate and their hearty enthusiasm shows itself in




the shoulder and greet him. "Well. we'll go up on the Eifel Tower, chuckled 
Mr. Douglass, "I know nobody can interrupt us, when we are in that cage. 
But just as we started to ascend, a man in another cage shouted, "Hell 
Mr. Douglass, the last time I saw you was in Rochester." It was certainly 
gratifying to see the homage and reverence exhibited by people of the dominant 
race to Frederick Douglass at the World's Fair. 

HeThe great man had become very deeply interested in Paul Dunbar, because
the young poet Mr Douglass had struggle for existence and recognition had been so desperate. 
It is a recollection that I cherish the fact that the first time I ever heard mention of Paul Dunbars name is a recollection 
which I cherish. By appointment I had gone to see "the Sage of Anacostia" 
at his home across the Potomac from Washington. After we had finished 
with the business I had come to transact he said inquired "Have you ever
heard of Paul Dunbar?" I told him I had not. Then Mr. Douglass gave me the
facts in the young man's life. "He is very young, but there is no doubt
that he is a poet. He is working under the most discouraging circumstances
in his home, Dayton. He is running an elevator
Fate decreed that I should be with both of these renowned men shortly
before they passed into the great beyond. I was with Mr. Douglass just a few hours the day on which Mr. Douglass suddenly died, while he was at the table describing [*X his wife*] the homage paid him bythe
National Council of Women Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw and other officers of the N.C. of Women.
When Mr. Douglass entered the meeting of the Council a little before noon
one of the women spied him and announced from the platform that Frederick 
Douglass was in the house. Immediately a Committee was appointed to escort him
to the platform, and when he appeared before the women they gave him a royal 
Chautauqua salute. When the meeting adjourned and the white women had ceased 
paying their homage to Mr. Douglass which I had enjoyed so much from afar
a distance, I cam forward and greeted him. He and I left the building to what is now the Columbia theatre together and walked to the corner. There he asked me to have lunch with him
But I had been indisposed for several days and declined the in[for]vitation. 
After insisting lifting his large light sombrero in which he looked so handsome he bade me
good bye. And that evening a fri about seven o'clock a friend came by our house to tell me that Fredericj Douglass had just died suddenly while he was dexcribing

119 1/2


caused me [to reflect seriously].

while I could not agree with it entirely, it caused me much serious thought [to reflect seriously] .
I was forced to acknowledge to myself that it had often been hard for me to hold fast
to my faith, when crimes were committed with immunity against my race.
After reflecting upon the injustices of various kinds of which they had been
victim so long, my mind would revert involuntarily to to the horrors and
cruelty of slavery for 300 years. In moments like these I feared that if I 
did not hold fast to my belief in the religion of Jesus Christ, my grip on
my faith might slip. The more I realized that I was often depressed and
that my mind was frequently disturbed by thoughts like these, while I was carrying
my baby under my heart, the more I became reconciled to what had
once seemed such a cruel and bitter fate.



to his wife the ovation tendered to him in the forenoon by the members and
officers of the National Council of Women. How deeply I regretted then that
I had not spent [*another hour*] a few more in the company of that great man.
When Paul Dunbar married he brought his wife and his mother to live in my
father's house which was next door to ours. Precious memories rush over me
like a flood whenever I pass that house. I can see Paul Dunbar as he used to
beckon me as when I walked by when he wanted to read me a poem which he had just
written or when he wished to discuss a word or a subject on which he had not
yet fully decided. Paul often came to see me to read his poems or his articles in
prose before he sent them to the magazines. Sometimes he would tauntingly wave back
and forth a check which he had just received and say "Wouldn't you like to 
have that? Then, after he thought he had aroused my curiosity sufficiently
he would show it to me and say "Look at it quick Dont keep it long. Give it
back to me right away.

The Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs invited me to deliver
an address when it met in Dayton Ohio. When Paul heard I was coming, he
wrote me a letter inviting me to stop with him. Knowing that his mother had
the burden of the house resting upon her in addition to nursing her son who
had been ill quite a while and
has confined to the house, I declined. But he wrote again urging me to stay
with his mother and himself and saying that it would be such a great pleasure
to talk over the good old times that he would be bitterly disappointed, if I
did not do so. I did not have the heart to decline again and I accepted the
invitation. When I saw him he was shut in, wasted and worn by disease and
coughing his young and precious life away, yet full of cheer, when not
actually racked with pain and perfectly resigned to his fate. On one occasion

119 1/2
       
[later on] a few months after my babys death 
a thought [which] occurred to me one day while I was in a paroxysm
of grief which helped t reconcile me to the loss of my first born.  While I was
looking forward to his coming one of my friends, a man whom I had known from
boyhood was brutally lynched in Memphis, not because he had committed a crime,
but because he was prospering too well.  He and several other colored men were
running a store at which colored people who came from the country had begun to trade,
They had formerly spent their money at th store kept by some white man, and
these white men became so angry at the increasing trade of their colored competitors that they started
a row one night which caused the latter's arrest.  several nights after they had been place
in jail a mob took them out and lynched them.  It is one thing to read that
quite another to learn that your friend who has committed no crime has suffered a [costly] cruel fate.
Tom Moss had attended the parties which my parents gave me as a child.  He had
[given me half a dozen solid silver oyster forks when we married] One of the most beautiful wedding presents we received was the gift of Tom Moss
The lynching of this friend affected me deeply.  I could think of little else
but this awful crime for days.  I resented the barbarous treatment of colored
men by white mobs with all the intensity of my soul.
And so, as I was grieving over the loss of my baby boy one day, it occurred
to me that it might be well for him and for his parents that his precious
life was not spared.  The horror and resentment felt by the mother coupled with
the bitterness which filled her soul might have seriously and injuriously affected 
the unborn child.  Who can tell how many desperadoes have been born to
colored mothers who were carrying them under their hearts when some relative
or friend was shot or burned alive or beaten to death by a mob.  Thoughts
like these did much to reconcile me to the loss of my baby boy.  I was also
impressed with a statement made by one of my white friends who happened to 
meet me on the street one day shortly after I was bereaved.  "I do not see how she said
any colored woman can make up her mind to become a mother under the existing
conditions in the United States.  I should think a colored woman would feel she
was perpetrating a great injustice upon a helpless infant she would bring
into the world.  I had never heard that point of view expressed before and it

The engagement at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was
indellibly impressed upon my mind, not only because those who invited me to 
speak had to expend a larger sum for my services than anybody or any organization had ever done
before, but because of an incident which preceded and one which followed
it.  In the winter a physician told me that I would have to undergo an operation
to prevent me from becoming an invalid for the rest of my life.
As soon as I could I arranged to go to a Western Clinic over which one
of the greatest surgeons in the world presided.  When I reached the hospital
and requested thiat this far-famed physician should perform the operation
I was told that as he advanced in years he was doing as little work as possible
and preferred to have younger men who were as skillful as himself
operate in his stead.  The was bad-very bad news for me. I had set my heart
on having the famous surgeon about whom I had been reading so long take my
case and this message was conveyed to him.  Immediately he sent me word
that if a woman had come alone 1000 miles to have an operation performed
and wanted him to do it, he would certainly comply with that request.
And he did.  I remained at this hospital nearly two months and [when]  I think
of it to day as I would probably would if I had been permitted to remain
that long in Heaven.  I feel also that I could never pay in dollars and
cents for the attention I received there.
When I returned home I learned that during my absence we had sustained 
a terrible loss by fire.  [?] up housekeeping, when I took
our two daughters to Oberlin, where they remained one year.  Placed our household
effects in a storage house. A fire broke out on the floor on which our
things were stored and destroyed almost everything we had.  Not only
were the three volumes on the History of Woman Suffrage and other books given
me by Susan B. Anthony licked up by the flames but many other literary
treasures suffered this same fate.  Among them were autographed copies
books given me by Frances Willard, the great temperance advocate, W.T.
Stead for many years, the editor of the English Review of Reviews,
Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger and several other well-known authors and publishers

der to get first hand information about this matter I made up my mind that I 
would question every black Frenchman I happened to meet in the street about
their status is France, so as to ascertain whether they were discriminated
against in anyway and how they were treated on general principles.  Each and
everyone of them assured me that they were treated just like "other Frenchmen,"
wherever [where] they went or whatever they wanted to do.
But a conversation with one French-African cured me of this habit of propounding
questions, I had asked whether he could attend any school he chose, whether he
could be



really white to all intents and purposes with blue eyes and golden hair
have refused to accompany him to the railroad station in the South, because, they said,
if I wanted to buy a Pullman ticket, they "would give me away."  Nobody who
had any sense of humor at all could fail to enjoy a situation like that-
seeing a white person fear to go to the station with one decidedly swarthy
because the agent would know that the individual who wanted the ticket was
classified as colored, and, would therefore, not be allowed to get it.
The white-colored friend in each case was well known in his community as a 
"Negro."  Nothing is more ridiculous than the Race Problem in the United
States.
A short time ago Mr. Max Barber, formerly editor the Voice of the 
Negro, recalled an incident which once happened in Atlanta, Georgia.  He walked
into an elevator first and I entered behind him alone.  As soon as the gallantly 
southern gentlemen saw me they removed their hats.  When I turned
around to talk to Mr. Barber, a more disgusted set of men than they were had
never been seen.  One of them suddenly discovered a speck of dust on his hat
rubbed it off, [and placed it firmly on his head] as though he had removed it
for that purpose, and then placed it firmly on his head. The others follow
suit.  It is safe to assert that not one of those southern white gentlemen
could have been forced to previously to admit that he could possibly mistake a colored man
for a white lady."  For, in many parts of the South a colored woman is 
never referred to as a "lady".  All "ladies" are white.
Whenever I have needed [to buy] a berth on a Pullman in the South, or when
I have wanted to see a play or hear an opera, I have bought my ticket office
just as a white woman would.  To me this is a very discouraging sign of
the times.  It proves that even though I am far from being fair, the fact t
that I ask for a ticket is all the proof the ticket seller needs to convince
him that I am not a colored woman, even though circumstantial evidence is
against me.  "If she really belonged to the jim-crowed group." they seem to
argue, "she would not dare to ask for privileges granted only to the whites

had to offer.
The story of my stopping at a white hotel in Washington will amuse some 
people immensely. By some in my own group the idea that I could deceive anybody concerning
my racial identity, especially in the South, will be considered a huge joke.
"Nobody who has a pair of eyes and who uses them could possibly make a mistake
about your race,"they will say. With a cocksureness that defies doubt
or contradiction white people in the South declare emphatically that they
can always detect a person of African descent, however fair he or she may be.
And yet, thousands of authentic cases might be cited to prove this contention
is false. Every day in the South Colored people who are far from being fair every day in the South are enjoying advantages
to which they are entitled,but which they would be denied,if white people
had not been deceived about their race.
A man who is dark brown in complexion, having hair which is not dead
straight,worked as a "white man", in Birmingham,Alabama for several years.
He called himself an"Indian", and that made him white there. Few people who see
him here can believe that is true, but it happened, nevertheless.
Colored people who pass over the line can be dedected much more easily
by their own group than they can by white people.For that reason I have frequently
been able to avail myself of privileges and take advantages of opportunities
in the South which the advocates of segregation would never
have allowed me to enjoy, if they had been positive that I belonged to the
prescribed race. It is not considered diplomatic for colored people to admit
this, because they thereby incur the displeasure of both white and black
There are very few colored people, however, who will refuse to avail themselves
of necessaries and comforts which they desire, if by any hook or
crook they can arrange to secure them. If they refused to do so, they would
be playing into the hand of their foes.
Mistakes have been made with reference to my racial identity over and 
over again, not because I am so fair, but because I have gone ahead and
availed myself of whatever it was my right to have without acting as though
I feared I could not get it. On several occasions colored people who were

Ill Health and Fire.

Nearly all of the furniture, rugs, pictures and china were destroyed
including many of our wedding presents. Most of the silver was saved,as
were also some pieces of a limoges china breakfast set which my mother had
given me and which I was able to match, The beautiful seal skin ulster
which Mother had made in England from selected skins and the one which
she gave me were so badly damaged by chemicals that they were completely
ruined. 
This is a splendid illustration of my husband's optimism. He believed
in looking upon the bright side of everything. It seemed never to occur to
him that any bad luck could overtake him. Ten days before the fire broke
out in the storage rooms, the agent of the company with which he insured the
our belongings notified Judge Terrell that the storage [room] house was unsafe
and refused to renew the policy., until they were removed. But the unconquerable
optimism of my husband led him to believe that nothing would happen,
if he took his time in moving them, so he let them remain where they
were. When, therefore, nearly everything we possessed in the world was destroyed
by fire, it was a total loss to us, for the insurance had lapsed
ten days.

pestiferous little article was. Although I urged him to send it to Chicago
to me, he refused to comply with that request. He would put it where he knew
it couldn't get lost for a while anyhow, he said.
     My precious little thimble became a great nuisance to my family, I 
fear, because I was so wretched when it was misplaced, which happened every
now and then, when I was called away suddenly while sewing with it, laid it
down hurriedly and forgot where I had left it. Under such circumstances I
never stopped hunting for it till I found it. Nothing inanimate that I have
ever possessed was (?) and nothing inanimate
that I have ever owned has caused me to passes any unhappy moments 
it did.
   Even as a young girl the thought of being separated from my thimble
made me very wretched. . When I was about 14 years old I suddenly discovered
at the beginning of the school year in September that it was gone. The lady
with whom I boarded declared she had not seen it. Her little daughter about
ten and her husband well advanced in years (?). That settle it. My beloved
thimble was lost at last - irretrievably, irrecoverably lost. All throu
through the fall and winter I grieved about it. Scarcely a day passed that 
I did not talk about it. Finally a short time before school closed for the
summer vacation my landlady brought my thimble to me, saying she had found
it in the back yard, when I had probably dropped it and where it had lain
all the winter, till the snow melted in the Spring.
     On another occasion I was separated from my thimble throughout the
Fall and winter. A friend who lived with us shortly after we went to house
keeping and I were sewing together one afternoon. Although I did not enjoy
 sewing, nevertheless I learned to do it quite well, because it saved money.
For many years I made all of my mother's housedresses, and nearly all the
summer dresses which the two girls and myself wore. Sometimes I had help
and sometimes I did not. But, to return to the thimble. I remembered distinctly 
that I had set it on the sideboard in the dining room, when I stopp
stopped. But when I went to look for it, it was gone. My husband, my friend
 

Visit to the World's Fair.
My father invited me to visit the World's Fair,while he and his family
were there,and paid all the expenses of my trip.  The Midway Plaisance with
all its oriental denizens and dancers was something [perform] decidedly new under the
sun and many there were to see them only in this country to come away quite sho
ed.  Compared with what one sees on the stage commonly today [?]
exotic ladies knew nothing but the A.B.C. of sending thrills [?] spinal
column of American sight-seeers.  Chicago was only an overgrown village
when the World's Fair was held there to celebrate the 400th anniversary of
the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus a year later than it should have been
and was now not the mammoth, stirring metropolis of the West that it now is.
Although the exhibits sent from practically every civilized country in
the worked instructed and fascinated me beyond expression and I never tired of looking at them.
But the recollections which have left [a more] the most delightful flavor in my memory
was the honor paid to the great Frederick Douglass by the people of
the dominant race as well as by own his group.  [?] [?]
[?]bar, just as he was starting on his career as
a poet, Mr, Douglass [had] was the Commissioner in charge of the exhibit in Hayti at theWorld's 
Fair and he employed Paul Dunbar to assist him.  Mr. Douglass had the 
it of entertaining his friends at the Fair by giving them a few hours
his valuable time taking them to see the exhibits which he especial
ed. Pursuant to this custom he invited me to go with him one aftern
take in some of the sights.  As we walked along either in through the gro
in thee buildings Mr. Douglass was continually halted by admiring indivi
who begged the privilege of shaking hands with him.  A mother w
him and say, "[This is] You are Frederick Douglass, [isn't it] aren't you  Please
with my little daughter or my little son, because when he
want him to say that he has met and shaken hands with the
Douglass.  "Let's get on the scenic railway," suggested Mr.
that we may have a chance to talk a little.  Nobody can
But he reckoned without his host, for we no sooner
hat little railroad than a man reached over two seats






the shoulder and greet him. "Well. we'll go up on the Eifel Tower,chuckled
Mr. Douglass, "I know nobody can interrupt us, when we are in that cage."
But just as we started to ascend, a man in another cage shouted, " Hello
Mr. Douglass, the last time I saw you was in Rochester."  It was certainly
gratifying to see the homage and reverence exhibited by people for the dominant
race to Frederick Douglass at the World's Fair.
The great man had become very deeply interested in Paul Dunbar,because
[*Mr. Douglass*]
the young poets's struggle for existence and recognition had been so desperate.
The fact that the first time I ever heard mention Paul Dunbars name is a recollection
which I cherish. It is a recollection [that I cherish]
By appointment I had gone to see "the Sage of Anacostia"
at his home across the Potomac from Washington. After we had finished
with the business I had come to transact he said [inquired] "Have you ever
heard of Paul Dunbar?"  I told him I had not.  Then Mr. Douglass gave me the
facts in the young man's life."He is very young, but there is no doubt
that he is a great poet.  He is working under the most discouraging circumstances
in his home, Dayton.  He is running an elevator
Fate decreed that I should be with both of these renowned men shortly
before they passed into the great beyond.  I was with Mr. Douglass just a few hours before he The day on which Mr. Douglass suddenly 
died at his home, [while he was at the table describing the homage paid him bythe]
Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw [National Council of Women and other officers of the N.C. of Women.]
[When Mr. Douglass entered] He had attended the meeting of thee Council a little before noon
when one of the women spied him as he entered the door [and] she announced from the platform that Frederick
Douglass was in the house.  Immediately a Committee was appointed to es[?]t him
to the platform, and when he appeared before the women they gave him a royal 
Chautauque salute.  When the meeting adjourned and the white women had ceased
paying their homage to Mr. Douglass which I had enjoyed [so much from afar] at a distance, a distance, I came forward and greeted him.  He and I left [the building to] what is now the Columbia theatre 
together and walked to the corner.  There he asked me to have lunch with him
But I had been indisposed for several days and declined the invitation[for].
[After insisting] Lifting his large, light sombrero in which he looked so handsome he bade me\good bye.  And that evening a fri about seven o'clock a friend came by our house to tell
me that Fredericj Douglass had jus died suddenly while he was dexcribing










119 1/2 [caused me to reflect seriously.]
while I could not agree with it entirely, it caused me much serious thought.
I was forced to acknowledge to myself that it had often been hard for me to hold fast
to my faith, when crimes were committed with impunity against my race.
After reflecting upon the injustices of various kinds of which its representatives had been
victims so long, my mind would revert involuntarily to the horrors and
cruelty of slavery perpetrated upon a defenceless people for 300 years.  In moments like these I feared that if I
seriously did not hold fast to my belief in the religion of Jesus Christ, my grip on
my faith might slip. 
The more I realized how [my depression of my mind) might have affected my unborn child that I was often depressed and that my mind was frequently disturbed by thoughts like these,while I was carrying 
my baby under my heart, the more I became reconciled to what had
once seemed such a cruel and bitter fate.
which was caused by the lynching of a friend
(and horror of this crime)
2




own personal observation, but none was more striking than the one which 
might have been done in my own home. 

???? and I have weathered the storms of fifty 
years together. Sometimes we have been very happy and then again we have
been very sad. When I shuffle off this mortal coil I shall request my loved 
ones whom I leave behind to put my little thimble in the casket with me,  
so that we may be together till the end of time. 



11912
A few months after my baby's death
a though occurred to me one day while I was in a paroxyam
of grief which helped to reconcile me to the loss. While I was
looking forward to his coming, the lynching of Tom Moss to which have already whom I had known from
my girlhood was brutally lunched in Memphis, not because he had committed a crime,
as I have already explain but because he was prospering too well. Tom Moss and several other colored men were
running a store at which colored people who came from the country had begun to trade.
They had

And so, as I was greiving over the loss of my baby boy one day, it occurred
to me that under the circumstances it might be well for him and for his parents that his precious
life was not spared. The horror and resentment felt by the mother coupled with
the bitterness which filled her soul might have seriously and injuriously affected
the unborn child. Who can tell how many desperadoes have been born to
colored mothers who before the birth of their babies had been shocked and distracted, when some relative
or friend was shot or burned alive or beaten to death by a mob. 
I was also
impressed with a statement made by one of my white friends who happened to
meet me on the street one day shortly after I was bereaved. "I do not see", she said "how
any colored woman can make up her mind to become a mother under the existing
conditions in the United States. I should think that under the circumstances a colored woman could feel she
was peroetating a great injustice upon any helpless infant she would bring
into the world." I had never head that point of view expressed before and

to his wife the ovation tendered to him in the forenoon by the members and
officers of the National Council of Women. How deeply I regretted then that'
another hour
I had not spent a few more in the company of that great man.

When Paul Dunbar married he brought his wife and his mother to live in my
father's house which was next door to ours. Precious memories rush over me
like a flood whenever I pass that house. I can see Paul Dunbar as he used to
beckon me when I walked by when he wanted to read me a poem which he had just
written or when he wished to discuss a word or a subject on which he had not
yet fully decided. Paul often came to see me to read his poems or his articles in
prose before he sent them to the magazines. Sometimes he would tauntingly wave back
and forth a check which he had just received and say "Wouldn't you like to
have that? Then, after he thought he had used my curiosity sufficiently
he would show it to me and say "Look at it quick Dont keep it long. Give it
back to me right away.

The Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs invited me to deliver
an address when it met in Dayton Ohio. When Paul heard I was coming, he
wrote me a letter inviting me to stop with him. Knowing that his mother had
the burden of the house resting upon her in addition to nursing her son who
had been ill quite a while and
was confined to the house, I declined. But he wrote again urging me to stay
with his mother and himself and saying that it would be such a great pleasure
to talk over the good old times that he would be bitterly disappointed, if I
did not do so. I did not have the heart to decline again and I accepted the
invitation. When I saw him he was shut in, wasted and worn by disease and
coughing his young and precious life away, yet full of sheer, when not
actually racked with pain and perfectly resigned to his fate. On one occasion

116

During the time when colored people engaged in such heated discussions about
industrial training and the higher education, I was known as a disciple of
the latter school. Dr. W.E.B. Dubois was its leader and I agreed with him perfectly.
At the same time I realized that no race could ever hope to stand on
a firm financial basis without a well-trained laboring class. But I felt that
Mr. Washington emphasized industrial training to the exclusion of everything
else, when he first started his crusade in its behalf. Moreover, it seemed to
me that he sometimes tried to make colored people who had acquired the higher
education [*appear*] as ridiculous as he could, which I thought was both unwise and unfair.

I visited Tuskegee for the first time when I accepted an invitation
which Dr. Washington extended to me by wire. Dr. Dubois who was then teaching
at Atlanta University had invited me to speak on "The Negro Woman and the
Church" at one of the conferences which he held at that institution. After I delivered
the Atlanta address, Dr. Washington wired me that if I would come
to Tuskegee to attend his Commencement, he would defray my expenses both ways.
I accepted and I was very glad I did.

It was the first time I had ever seen students actually performing
on the stage the work they had learned to do in school as a part of the Commencement
exercises. It interested me greatly to hear young men tell how to
build a house, how to paint it and how to compute the cost of everything they
did. After I had seen Tuskegee with my own eyes, I had a higher regard and a
greater admiration for its founder than I had ever entertained before. I realized
what a splendid work he was doing to promote the welfare of his race -
that he was actually filling "a long-felt want."

Then and there I decided that henceforth when any one criticized Booker T. 
Washington's school in my presence or I happened to be a party to a discussion concerning
him I would simply say "I will talk about Tuskegee and its founder with you
if you have actually been there and have seen with your own eyes the fine work
being done. But if you have not been there, I'll not try to discuss the subject
with you." I felt it was a waste of time to enter into a debate with any
one who had not been to the school but had formed his opinion from hearsay.

41

In fact it was always a pleasure to address any group of colored women, no
matter whether it functioned in a small village, in a city, county or State.

When Dr. W.E.B. Dubois was a teacher in Atlanta. Georgia and held annual
conferences on some phase of race work, he invited me to address the 8th
Conference on the Negro Woman and the Church. This talk required a great deal
of research. While I was getting the necessary information I discovered that
this is one of the many subjects pertaining to the work well done by a single
group in the race about which practically nothing has been written and about which the
public will continue to remain in ignorance until the interesting facts are
published. I felt well repaid for my research. I was amazed at the prodigious
amount of work which colored women did for the church in the early days of
this country's history, long, long before the emancipation of slavery.

While I was in Atlanta filling this engagement for Dr. Dubois I received
a telegram from Dr. Booker T. Washington saying that he wanted me to come to
the Tuskegee Commencement, and remain two days and that he would defray my railroad
expenses from Atlanta and return. At that time the most acrimonious discussions
were engaged in by two divisions of colored people - one favoring the higher
education of the race and the other laying special stress upon the need of
industrial training.

Dr. Dubois was the High Priest of Higher Education and Dr. Booker T. Washington
was the champion and recognized spokesman for industrial training.
While I appreciated the efforts exerted by Dr. Washington to train the masses
of the race efficiently to earn their living, I also believed 
in the higher education for as many of the race as could possibly secure
it just as ardently as did Dr. Dubois. The invitation to visit Tuskegee about
which I had heard so much - good, bad and indifferent seemed almost providential
to me and I accepted it with the keenest anticipation of pleasure. At last I
would see for myself what this much-discussed school was like.

I had never seen a Commencement like the one at Tuskegee before. Students
actually did their stunts before the assembled multitude. They showed us how to

42

build houses, how to paint them, how to estimate the cost and so on down the
line. I was taken completely off my feet. I was a convert with all my heart,
soul, mind and strength. Here was a school giving just the kind of instruction
that the majority of the pupils attending it needed. Owing to the lessons inculcated
in slavery neither the white nor the colored people of the South knew
any more about injecting system into their work or making accurate calculations
than they should.

I was sure these students at Tuskegee would get a good start in the right
direction and might be expected to be the little leaven which would eventually
leaven the whole lump. After this - my first visit to Tuskegee - I made up my
mind I would never discuss the school or its founder with anybody who had not
seen it for himself. From that day forth whenever those friends tried to engage me in
conversation about Tuskegee who knew that way down deep in my heart I was a
stickler for the higher education and that if it came to a show down in the
controversy I would vote on that side, I would simply say "Have you seen Tuskegee?
If you haven't seen it for yourself I will not discuss it with you till
you do."

Mr. Scott Bone, who was then managing editor of the Washington Post but who later
became Governor of Alaska asked me to write an article about the Tuskegee
Commencement when I returned home. I told him that I had attended the Commencement
of Atlanta University a college for colored youth which had a scientific and an academic
course and awarded the A.B. degree to those who completed it and that I should
like to write an article about that also. He refused to commission me to write
this article for the Post on the ground that there was nothing new or distinctive
about such a Commencement, that it was like all the other commencements
and for that reason the readers of his paper would not be interested in it at
all. I was greatly embarrassed and disturbed by this decision. I disliked to
write an article for the Post describing the Tuskegee Commencement and ignores
completely the one which represented
the higher education of colored youth. I learned from a reliable source
that I was criticized by some friends of Atlanta University for so doing. But an obdurate editor's blunt refusal
to publish an article and his blue pencil (which invariably eliminates one's
[*most*] precious thoughts as well as his pet paragraphs) have caused many another poor, helpless
writer to be pilloried and misunderstood.

Nobody in the house had seen it and there was nobody whom I could possibly
suspect. I searched everywhere for it. I [?????????????] and looked
behind every piece of furniture in the house. I went through every box and
drawer from the first floor to the third drawers and boxes
which had not been opened for months. But the thimble could not be found.
After having succeeded in keeping it for twenty years I knew it was gone.
I tried to give it up philosophically and forget it. I ridiculed myself for
setting so much stock and store by a bauble like a thimble, even if my mother
had given it to me when I was a little girl and I had preserved it so long
but, like Banque's ghost it wouldn't be downed.

One day after the Winter had passed and the warm days of Spring had
come I heard my friend utter a loud exclamation, as she was coming down
stairs. She had felt a small, cold object in the pocket of her negligee, and
when she had investigated she discovered it was my thimble. It had been quietly
reposing there for six months. My friend thought that [w???] she [????????]
by the sideboard the afternoon we sewed together, she must have have
been fingering the thimble, while she was talking and had put it into her
pocket when she left the room without being conscious of doing so. It turned
quite cold shortly after that and she discarded the light negligee for a 
heavier garment for the rest of the season.

That was a valuable lesson for me on circumstantial evidence.
Some of my acquaintances to whom I related my tale of woe suspected that the girl
who was in my home working her way through school. had taken the thimble
and advised me to her questioned by the police, I had no idea of doing
such a thing and I would never have forgiven myself, if I had done so. I
shuddered when I thought what might have been the fate of that friendless
girl, if she had working for people of the dominant group who believe that
all colored people steal. Many a colored man - many a colored woman, no more
guilty than that girl in my house when my gold thimble mysteriously disappeared,
has been convicted and sentenced to the penetentiary for years.
Several forceful illustrations of the wrong which may be done innocent people
depending solely upon circumstantial evidence have come under my
own personal observation, but none more striking than the one which might

The Vicissitudes of My Precious Gold Thimble.

Although I was glad to get a chance to see the World's Fair I was
quite unhappy for several weeks after I [????] Chicago because of an incident
which some people might consider quite trivial. For the first time in my
life the gold thimble which my mother gave me when I was twelve years old
was left at home by mistake. There is no doubt whatever that it is possible
to have a genuine affection for an inanimate object, for I dearly love
my little gold thimble. It had been my inseparable companion so long.
I had carried it with me thrugh the High School and college and I had taken
it abroad. Whenever I traveled in the United States or in Europe I put
it in my purse with my railroad ticket, so determined was I never to lose
it. And now having carefully preserved it through all those years there I
was in Chicago without it.

I wrote my husband immediately and implored him to search carefully
through our two rooms till he found my thimble. When he did not reply the
day after he received my letter, I wired him begging him to telegraph me
whether he had succeeded in finding it. "Sorry to say I have not found it
yet," came back the answer." In order to pacify and comfort me he wrote
he was sure the thimble was in the rooms somewhere, but he had not had
time to search for it thoroughly. I wired my husband nearly every day, begging
him to find it and assuring him that I could never become reconciled
to losing it. Having waited two weeks without hearing that my thimble
had been found I thought seriously of returning home. But just as I had
about decided to do so I received a telegram from Mr. Terrell saying that
it had come to light.

One day as he was walking up the street, he met a friend who had
come to help me get ready to go to Chicago. I had lent her my thimble so that
she might [?????] something for me and when she went home she took the little
timble with her by mistake. It never occurred to her that I worried about 
it, so she did not take the trouble to tell my husband she had it. Mr. Terrell
used to say that he fell upon my friend's neck and embraced her right
there in the street, his mind was greatly relieved to learn where that

The Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs invited me to deliver
an address when it met in Dayton, Ohio. Paul heard I was coming and
wrote me a letter inviting me to stop with him. Knowing that his mother had
the burden of the home resting upon her shoulders in addition to the strain
mental and physical, of nursing her son who [??????????] despaired of even
then, I declined. Almost by return mail Paul wrote again urging me to stop
with his mother and himself, saying it would do him so much good to talk over
the good old times. I could not resist that and I went to his home.

When I saw him then he was wasted and worn by disease and he was coughing
his precious, young life away.. He was cheerful, however,, when not actually
racked with pain and perfectly resigned to his fate.

On one occasion when some beautiful girls who had called to pay their 
respects to Mr. Dunbar had gone, in a nervous effort to relieve the tension
of my own feelings, I turned to him and said: "Sometimes I am tempted to believe
you are not half so ill as you pretend to be. I believe you are just
playing the role of interesting invalid, so as to receive the sympathy and
homage of these beautiful girls."

"Sometimes I think I am just loafing myself," he laughingly replied.
just a [??????] before he passed away
How well he remembered this was shown a short while after I returned home.
He sent me a copy of his "Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow," which at that time
was his latest book. On the fly leaf he had written with his own hand, a fea
feat which during the last year of his illness he was often unable to perform
the following lines.

"Look hyeah, Molly,
Aint it jolly,
Jes a loafin' roun'?
Tell the Jedge
Not to hedge
For I am still in town.

With Fredereik Douglass and Paul Dunbar at the World's Fair.

[??????] following critical illness during which I lost my first baby and came
very near losing my life, my father invited me to visit the World's Fair,
while he and his family were there, and generously paid the expenses of the
trip. The Midway Plaisance [?????? ????? ??????] denizens and dancers
was something new under the sun and many perfect ladies who went there to see
them perform came away very much shocked. Compared with what one commonly sees on the
stage in this country to day, however, those exotic ladies knew nothing but
the A.B.C. of sending thrills down the spinal columns of American sight seers
by their terpsichorean stunts. Chicago was only an overgrown village when the
World's Fair was held there to celebrate a year later than it should have
been the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus and it was
not the stirring, milling, mammoth metropolis of the West that it now is.

The exhibits sent from nearly every civilized country in the world instructed
and fascinated me beyond expression and I never tired looking at
them. When my companions - men as well as women - sometimes [??????] completely exhausted
from walking up an down the endless aisles of the long buildings and from
inspecting what they contained, I would leave them to rest while I continued
joyfully on my way. My friend [?????????] marveled at my power of endurance
and I sometimes wonder at it myself. [???????] very tired, I can still
work on an incredibly long time. There are few young women who can walk further,
stick to a job or dance longer than I can even unto this day. further, stick
to a [j?????????????????] World's Fair which have left a
more delightful flavor in my memory than anything else. One was the great honor
paid to Frederick Douglass by people of the dominant race as well as by
those in his own group. The other was meeting Paul Laurence Dunbar, just as he
was starting on his career as a poet.

Mr. Douglass was the Commissioner in charge of the exhibit from Hayti
at the Fair and he employed Paul Dunbar to assist him. Mr. Douglass was accustomed
to entertain his friends there by taking them to see some of the exhibits
which he especially liked. Persuant to this custom he invited me to go
with him one afternoon to take in some of the sights. As we walked along with



through the grounds or in the buildings, Mr. Douglass was continually
halted by admiring people who begged the privilege of shaking hands with him.
A mother would stop him and say, "You are Frederick Douglass, aren't you?
Please shake hands with my little son (or may be it was a little daughter)
, because when he grows up I want him to say he has shaken hands with 
the great Frederick Douglass."

"Let's get on the scenic railway," suggested Mr. Douglass, so that we
may have a chance to talk a little. Nobody can get us there." But he had
reckoned without his host, for we had no sooner taken seats on that little
railroad than a man reached over two seats to touch him on the shoulder and
greet him. "Well, we'll go up on the Eifel Tower," chuckled, Mr. Douglass
"I know nobody can interrupt us, when we are in one of those cages."

But, just as we started to ascend, a man in another cage shouted. "Hello
Mr. Douglass, the last time I saw you was in Rochester." It was certainly
gratifying to see the homage and reverence exhibited by people of the dominant
race to Frederick Douglass at the World's Fair.

The great man had become very deeply interested in Paul Dunbar, because
his struggle for existence and recognition had been so desperate. The
fact that Mr. Douglass was the first person I ever heard mention Paul Dunbar's
name in a recollection that I cherish. By appointment I had gone to
see him in his home in Anacostia across the Potomac River from Washington.
After finishing the business I had come to transact the "Sage of Anacostia"
inquired "Have you ever heard of Paul Dunbar?" I told him I had not. Then
Mr. Douglass rehearsed the facts in the young man's life. "He is very
young, but there is no doubt that he is a poet," he said. He is working under
the most discouraging circumstances in his home, Dayton, Ohio. He is
an elevator boy and on his meager wage of $4 a week he is trying to support
his mother and himself. Let me read you one of his poems" said Mr. Douglass
and then he arose to get it. I can see his fine face and his majestic form
now, as he left the room. He soon returned with a newspaper clipping and began to
read the drowsy day. When Mr. Douglass had read several stanzas his voice

43

a period of nearly thirty years or which addresses delivered for organizations formed
for widely different purposes by people of different races enabled me to
deal the most effective blows in behalf of the cause to which I had dedicated
my life and consecrated my powers. Every time I spoke in public, no matter how
small was the audience which greeted me, I tried to say the right thing in the
most effective way.

Because I practically never used a manuscript when I delivered an address many thought I spoke extemporaneously.
This was not the case and I tried to disabuse the people's minds of
this impression every time I had a chance. When I had time, as a rule, I not
only decided very carefully what arguments I would make and what facts I
would present, but I spent considerable time choosing the language in whcih
my thoughts should be couched. I took myself very seriously as a public
speaker. It always amazed me to hear an individual who had been specially invited
to address an audience say nonchalantly as he arose, "I don't know what I shall talk
about to night. I haven't decided what my subject shall be. Perhaps I had
better talk about this (naming the theme he had chosen.) I always felt that
either the speaker had prepared [?????? ??????] the audience to believe he
was such a genius that he could make a fine speech without doing so or that
he had done the people who came to hear him a great injustice, if he had not.

[*page 47*]

Sometimes I am asked what was the largest sum I ever received for an
address. I usually reply by saying that the largest sum I ever received
for rendering such a service was $500. It is interesting to watch the look
of incredulity on the inquirer's face. After allowing that statement to
sink into his consciousness I explain by stating that the Woman's Congress
of Missions invited me to represent colored women at a meeting which they
held in San Francisco during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition 
and it cost them that much to transport me from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and return, and pay all the expenses incident to such a long jaunt across
the continent twice. The lady who introduced me to the audience referred
to me as an alien. It was the first time I had every thought anybody regarded
me as an "alien" and I was both shocked and pained. As I arose I said
that even if I were technically an alien in the United States, I certainly
did not feel like one. It afterward occurred to me that everybody in this
country is an alien except the Indians.

It is impossible for me to decide which was the most notable engagements
I filled during the time I was on the lecture platform which covered
a period of thirty years. Nor can I tell which addresses delivered for organizations
formed for widely different purposes by people of different races enabled me to
[*???? ???? ??????? ??????*]

Club Work.

Shortly after my marriage I became very much interested in club work
among our women. For many years colored women had been banding themselves
together in the interest of the church and had done very effective work in
various ways. But secular organizations among them were comparatively rare.
As soon as the idea of uniting their forces outside the church dawned upon
them, it took definite, tangible form quickly and women of all classes and
conditions seized upon it with enthusiasm.

In Washington, D.C. where there were probably more colored women who had enjoyed
educational advantages than in any other city in the country, this
was especially true. A goodly number of these women decided to band together
to raise the standard of their group and the Colored Women's League was formed
in 1893?. They resolved "That the colored women of the United States
associate ourselves together to collect all facts obtainable showing the moral
intellectual, industrial and social growth and attainments of our people;
to foster unity of purpose; to consider and determine methods which will promote
the best interests of the colored people in any direction that suggets
itself."

Among other things the League established a sort of Night School on a
small scale. Classes in various subjects were offered. As Chairman of the Educational
Committee I gave my services gratuitously to teach a class in English
Literature and one in German several nights a week. A goodly number
availed themselves of this opportunity and the students were asked to pay
ten cents a lesson, so as to help defray the expense of heating and lighting
the building of the Young Men's Christian Association where we met. There
were classes in sewing also and in other industrial arts.

Meantime in Boston a club of progressive colored women was formed whose
purposes and aims were similar to those the League. Each one of these organizations
grew space and enlarged its sphere of usefulness more and more.
In the summer of 1895 women from various States met in Boston at the call of
Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and the Federation of Afro-American Women

2

was formed. There were then two national organizations of Colored women, for
clubs outside of Washington had already become affiliated with the League.
A dispute soon arose as to which was the first to become actually national
in scope and later on the question was raised as to which one had more clubs
affiliated with it than the other

The Colored Woman's League declared it was the first to suggest that
there should be a national organization. An article which I myself wrote
and which appeared in Ringwoods Afro-American of Fashion in 1893 in May and June issue of Ringwood's Afro-American
Journal of Fashion proves beyond a doubt that this contention is correct.
The title of the article is "What the Colored Woman's League will do" and
reads as follows: "Anational organization of colored women could accomplish
so much in such a variety of ways that thoughtful, provident women are strenuously
urging their sisters all over the country to co-operate with them in
this important matter. In union there is strength, and in unity of purpose
there is inspiration.

The Colored Woman's League, recently organized in Washington, has cordially
invited women in all parts of the country to unite with it, so that
we may have a national organization similar to the Federation of Clubs of
the Women of the other race. The local societies are subject in no way whatsoever
to the League. The local societies may devote themselves to any
special work, in any manner they choose.

There is every reason for all who have the interests of the race at
heart to associate themselves with the League, so that there may be a vast
chain or organizations extending the length and breadth of the land devising
ways and means to advance our cause. We have always been equal to the highest
emergencies in the past and it remains for us now to prove to the world
that we are a unit in all matters pertaining to the education and elevation
of our race."

So far as I know this is the first article which appeared in any magazine
announcing that a national organization of colored women had been formed.

3

But the Federation of Afro-American Women, whose president was Mrs.
Booker T. Washington, declared that even if the League were first to say
there should be a national organization, the Federation was the first to actually become
national in scope. Among some of the close friends of the officers
and members of the these two bodies this dispute created no little
bitterness of feeling. In some respect it resembles the controversy between
the Wright Brothers and the Smithsonian Institute which caused the former
to decide to send to England the first plane in which they flew. To quote
Will Rogers, the humorist, "The trustees of the Smithsonian Institute decided
Langley's machine could have flown first but didn't. I could have flown to
France ahead of Lindbergh but I just neglected doing it. I had a lot of other
things on my mind at the the time."

When the National Federation of Afro-American Women met in Washington D.C.
July 20, 21, 22, 1896, Mrs. Josephine Bruce, wife of Ex-Senator B.K. Bruce, who
later became Register of the Treasury, stated that in July 1895 there had
been a national gathering of women in Boston and that in December of the same
year there had been a national gathering of women at Atlanta Georgia where
an exposition was held. Representation to this Congress of Women was by States
each State being allowed five delegates. Twenty five States were represented.

In the address which Mrs. Bruce delivered in Washington before this convention of
the Afro-American Federation of Women she made the following statement.
"There had been but one national gathering of colored women previous to
this Congress which was held in Atlanta, Georgia, viz the convention held in
Boston in July 1895."

Mrs. Bruce's statement of this fact has never been successfully challenged
so far as I know. Moreover, the program of the convention held by the National
League of Colored Women July 14th, 15th and 16th, 1896, a week before the
Afro-American Federation met, reads "First Annual Convention of the National
League of Colored Women," which proves that Mrs. Bruce's statement was correct.

It would appear, therefore, that while the Colored Woman's League of

4

Washington was the first to resolve "that colored women of the United States
associate themselves together," the group which assembled in Boston in July
1895 at the call of Mrs. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was the first, secular,
national gathering of colored women in the United States which met with the
intention of becoming permanent organization. It was at that Boston meeting
that Mrs. Booker T. Washington was elected President of the newly-formed
association which was named the National Federation of Afro-American Women
and which held its second convention in Washington in July 1896, the following
year a few days after the League held its first.

At the convention of the Afro-American Federation which marked a milestone
in the progress of the race, a remarkable thing was done. It was apparent to
the thoughtful women of our group that there would be very little likelihood
of two national organizations achieving success at that stage of their development.
Among these women, therefore, it was the consensus of opinion that only
one national organization was needed. After a sufficient number [*had been converted*] to this point
of view it was decided to merge the two organizations into one.

To effect this union a Committee of Seven was appointed from the League
and seven from the Federation of which I was one on July 20, the first day
the Afro-American Federation's second Convention met. This joint Committee
elected me Chairman and proceeded to discuss the terms on which we could unite
with justice to each organization. Considering the difficulties encountered
this was accomplished with comparatively little friction.

What should the child of this union be called? What was indeed the
question. It was decided to use the name of neither of the former organizations
which were merging. Therefore, it could be called neither a League
nor a Federation. After a prolonged discussion it was decided to call the new
organization "The National Association of Colored Women," the name under which
it was incorporated in St., Louis, Mo. in 1904 and which it will continue
to bear till the end of time, I hope.

Then the most difficult task of all confronted us: Who should be the first
president of the new Association [??? ????] That was indeed the question. It is safe

5

to assert that while we were in the throes of electing the president, the name
of no colored woman who had achieved prominence anywhere in the United States
failed to be presented for consideration. The name of practically every woman
in the room at the time, as a member of the Joint Committee, was also mentioned
for the office, not once but several times. When a member of this Committee
as nominated, the result of the poll usually showed that every woman on her
half of the Joint Committee voted for her, while every woman on the other half
voted for somebody else. Over and over again the tellers would report that
Miss A had 7 votes and Miss B had 7. And this went on indefinitely, until most
of us had little hope that anybody in the United States or out of it could ever
be elected.

Several times during the Committee meeting prayers were offered by the
members who sought divine guidance in accomplishing the task they were trying
so hard to perform. Like the other members of the Committee I had been nominated
early in the day and had met the same fate as the others. Finally I was nominated
the second time, the dead lock was broken, I received the majority of the votes
cast and was elected the first president of the National Association of Colored
Women. It was nearly six o'clock when this occurred. The Joint Committee had
been in session all day long and had to return to the church for the evening
session at eight o'clock, although each and every one of its members was worn
to a frazzle.

At the time I was expecting a little stranger who would arrive, I thought
and hoped, the last of September. He came, but did not tarry with me long.
It was a bitter, a greivous disappointment to Mr. Terrell and myself, but like
other mothers who have passed thru this Gethsemane, I pulled myself together
as best I could and went on with my work. In fact I had to go on with it, for
the teachers, parents of children and others who wanted to talk with the only
colored woman who was a member of the Board of Education insisted on seeing me
and presenting their respective cases, anything my nurse might say to the contrary,
notwithstanding. And they rendered me a great service for which I am grateful

6

to day. Obliged to be interested in the troubles and trial of others I had
little time to think of my own aching heart, disappointment, and woe.

Naturally, I felt it was a great honor to be elected president of the National
Association of Colored Women and I was especially gratified, because
the members of the Committee who finally broke the deadlock declared that
they had done so, because my fairness as Chairman of the Joint Committee convinced
them I was the right woman for the place.

It was a great undertaking for a young woman with little experience and it
required prodigious effort, not to mention patience, to establish the organization
on a firm foundation, so that the superstructure would be secure, I decided
that whatever else I tried to do, the ideals should be high. In assisting
with the constitution I suggested that no woman should serve as president longer
than two terms. I feared that some of the women whom I wanted very much to
hold in the new Association would lose interest in it, if they felt it would
be impossible for them to become its president, because the same woman might
be elected over and over again.

It was decided to hold the first convention of the National Association of
Colored Women in Nashville, Tennessee in the summer of 1897, because an exposition
was to be held there at that time, and we were sure that rates would be
reduced. Another reason which actuated the Association to make this decision
was a desire to interest southern women in the new organization and to make it
easy for them to attend the first convention.

This meeting in Nashville was a success from every point of view. It was
well attended, the subjects discussed covered those phases of our life in the
home, in the school and along other lines in which our women are especially
interested and on which the papers which were read gave them much useful information.
While social courtesies were extended by many leading colored citizens,
no one took more genuine pleasure in doing so that did Mr. and Mrs. J.C.
Napier. The latter is the daughter of the Hon. John M. Langston, one of the
most distinguished men the race has ever produced. In going to his office Mr.
Langston usued often to pass by our home and wave a pleasant greeting to

7

me and when returning to his home occasionally he would stop in to talk a few
minutes. It was always a pleasure to see him, for he not only had something to
say worth hearing, but he was full of good cheer and of enthusiasm for any
cause he espoused.

The second convention of the National Association of Colored Women was held
in Chicago, August 15, 16, 17, 1899. In the opinion of many who attended all
the conventions in the early years of the organization's existence, it was
the most successful we have ever held. There were 145 delegates - a large number
for that time. In addition to an unusually interesting program, fine speakers,
the active participation of the most distinguished colored women in the
United States and crowded houses both day and night, the biggest and best newspapers
of Chicago gave the Association more publicity than it has ever received
from the press of any other city in which we have since met.

Column after column giving detailed account of the proceedings appeared
in all the big dailies, while the editorials in several leading newspapers
bestowed upon the meetings, the officers and the delegates unstinted praise. 

"Of all the conventions that have met in this country this summer," said
the Daily News, "there is none that has taken hold of the business in hand
with more good sense and judgment than the National Association of Colored
Women, now assembled in this city. The subjects brought up, the manner of their
treatment and the decisions reached exhibit wide and appreciative knowledge of
conditions confronting colored people."

In commenting upon the delegates the Time Herald frankly admits "These
women were a continual revelation, not only as to personal appearance, but as
to intelligence and culture. If by a bit of magic the color of their skin could
be changed to white, one would have witnessed a convention of wide-awake women,
which in almost every particular would compare favorably with a Convention
of white-skinned women."

Nothing could have spoken more eloquently and more forcibly for the success
of our meetings than the crowded houses they drew. Long before it was time
to call the meetings to order, there was hardly standing room in Quinn Chapel

8

which was one of the largest churches in Chicago.

The first afternoon of the Convention we talked about establishing schools of Domestic Science
and insisted that our wage-earners should not only be skilled and proficient
in the trades but that they should establish the reputation of being
[?pendable] and reliable as well.

Why the National Association Should Devise Ways and Means for Establishing
Kindergartens was the subject for discussion the second afternoon. The
hope of the race lies in the children was the burden of our song and I expressed
the opinion that the more unfavorable the environment of children
the more necessary it is that steps be taken to counteract baleful influences
on innocent victims. For that reason I felt that the National Association
could do nothing better than assist in establishing as many kindergartens as
possible, and I started a fund for that purpose. In order to do this I had printed
in pamphlet form the address on The Progress of Colored Women which I had
delivered before the [*Thirtieth Annual Convention of the*] National American Woman Suffrage Association [*in Washington*] and sold it
to the delegates and visitors to the Convention. In this way the money was raised
with which to help establish kindergarten. And this is also how I happened
to be the first president of the Association to inaugurate the custom of
raising funds for some specific purpose.

Although the price charged for the pamphlets was only twenty five cents,
several enthusiastic friends paid a dollar for it and even more, so as to
help a good cause. Quite a neat little sum was thus raised and during the next
two years it was a great privilege to use it to assist in establishing and
maintaining the kindergartens which appealed to the Association for aid.

It is very gratifying to know that I inaugurated the plan of raising
funds for a special object which has been followed with varying degrees of
success by several presidents who succeeded me. I am glad also that the effort
I made was exerted in behalf and for the sake of the children of the race.
I tried to impress the delegates to the convention with the thought that if
the Association did nothing but try to save the children during their early

9

impressionable period of their lives, its mission would be more than nobly
fulfilled.

The Labor question, the Convict Lease System, Temperance, the Necessity
for an Equal Moral Standard for Men and Women and the Jim Crow Car Laws were
ably treated by women who had made a special study of these important subjects.

Miss Jane Addams of Hull House invited several of the officers to
lunch with her. In commenting upon this the Times-Herald says: "The color line
was given another good rub yesterday by Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, who
entertained at luncheon a party of colored women. The guests included in this
social departure were for the most part prominent out of town delegates to
the Convention of the National Association of Colored Women which has just 
closed in this city. After luncheon, at which Hull House residents were present,
another party of twenty five women came to inspect this social settlement.
They were shown all about by the residents, evincing great interest in
every department. "We were impressed," said one of the residents later in the
afternoon, "with the intelligence of these colored women. They inspected the
settlement understandingly and poured in on us as many interested questions
as we could answer. "This is the first time," says the Herald, "that colored
women have been given decided recognition in a social way by a woman of lighter skin."

"When Miss Jane Addams invited the delegates of the National Association
of Colored women to lunch with her," said one of the papers, "it was the whitest
thing she ever did."

After complimenting the women of the Association upon the intelligent
efforts they were making in behalf of their race, the Chicago Tribune said
editorially: "That within a single generation since the war which gave freedom
to the race such a gathering as this should be possible means a great deal.

Could Abraham Lincoln have looked in upon the nearly two thousand people
crowded into Quinn Chapel the other evening and have seen the representatives
of the race he emancipated and listened to the addresses said to have been so
admirably spoken by the president of the Convention, Mrs. Terrell and others
and

[?]
and others and observed their essential dignity, evident refinement of manner
and noted the breadth of their outlook for their race and country, it is
not difficult to imagine some of the emotions which would have stirred him,
especially in view of their so clear apprehension of the real conditions of
the problem before them."
"After watching these capable colored women three days," said one distinguished
white woman, "Inever want to hear another word about there being
no hope for the Negro.  Another thing, if the Lord helps him who helps himself,
three colored club women will have a good, long pull with Providence."
At the Chicago Biennial I was re-elected President by an overwhelming
majority.  Since I had served one year before the Convention was held in Nashville,
Tennessee, at which the constitution was adopted and which at my suggestion provided
that the president should serve only two terms, women who wanted very much to
elect me again feared that this clause would prevent them from doing so.
They insisted that while the Association was still in its infancy self-preservation
demanded that a woman should be retained at the helm in whose ability
to guide it wisely they had perfect confidence at the crucial time.
There were so few colored women who at that time knew enough about parliamentary
law to preside successfully over a large Convention, many of the
delegates argued, that it would be stupid and dangerous deliberately to  dispense
with the services of one who had proved that she was an adept at it and
elect another who might know little or nothing whatever becaome about it.  
But several women who were eager to become president of the National
Association themselves, missed no opportunity of assuring the delegates that
they would violate the constitution, if they elected me again.  Finally, however,
a lawyer declared that since I had been elected but once after the constitution
had been adopted at Nashville, I was eligible for re-election in
Chicago, and that if I were re-elected at the Chicago convention, I would then
begin to serve my second term.  The women were also informed by this same authority
that to rule I was not eligible for re-election in Chicago, because
I had been president a year before the adoption of the constitution limiting

As the Chicago Biennial I was re-elected President by an overwhelming
majority.  I had declared repeatedly that I did not desire to be re-elected.
So anxious was I to impress upon the delegates my reluctance to assume the
presidency again that I went so far as to say that I would not accept a re-election, unless it were unanimous (which from the nature of the case I
knew could never happen.) And even if it were, I stated, I greatly preferred
not to serve again.  Before leaving home my father who had come from Memphis
to see me urged me not to accept the presidency again under any circumstance
and my husband's opposition to it was as strong as my father's.
Most of the delegates supposed that the constitution prohibited the re-
election of the officers who had served the past two years.  Indeed it had
been stated positively as a fact.. Especially did the women who wished to become
President themselves insist upon this interpretation of the law.
On the morning of the election of officers after the name of five or six
candidates for the presidency had been mentioned, one of the delegates announced
 to the convention that there was no reason why all the officers
could not be re-elected, if the women wanted to retain them.
"The constitution," she explained,"forbids an officer from serving more
than two consecutive terms.  As is was adopted just two years ago at Nashville,
and as our present officers have served only one term since it was
adopted, they are all eligible for re-election."I still stoutly maintained
that I did not want to serve again.  But some of the officers on the platform
persuaded me to go before the women and promise to accept the presidency, if
I received a two-thirds vote of the convention.  This was the last straw





11
which broke the camel's back, so to speak.  So many of the delegates had
impressed me with the fact that it was my duty to remain at the helm till
the Association was well established on a solid foundation, that being human
I finally succumbed.
When I announced this decision to the convention the delegates applauded
it vigorously.  One of the candidates for the presidency then moved that the
name of each delegate should be called,she should come forward and deposit
her ballot in a box on a table in front of the pulpit in the presence of 
the whole convention.  This was done exactly as prescribed and the vote showed
that Mary Church Terrell had received 106 ballots out of a possible 145.
In other words there were thirty-nine votes distributed among the other five
candidates whose names were before the convention. Nobody who witnessed the
demonstration when the result of the poll was announced could have doubted
who was the choice of the delegates. Some of the women wept and rushed upon
the platform to embrace me.  Such a spontaneous outburst of confidence in
me thus displayed by the delegates more than repaid me for all the strenuous
efforts I had exerted to make the Association [?] and the Convention
in particular a success.
The third convention of the Association which was the one over which
I presided was held in Buffalo, New York, in the summer of 1901.  Here also
the press of the city bestowed unstinted praise upon the officers, the delegates
the earnest efforts we were making as an organization and upon the work which we had
actually done.  Some of the delegates urged me to allow them to present my
name for re-election to the presidency at this convention also, but it did not
offer the slightest temptation to me to do so.  When the constitution was being written
as I have already said, I myself had suggested that a president should serve
only two terms and nobody could have persuaded me to violate it.
I wanted very much, however, to have a woman well-fitted intellectually
and spiritually to be chosen president of the Association.  In looking over the
possible candidates I was fully persuaded that nobody possessed the necessary
qualifications to a higher degree than did Mrs. Josephine Silone Yates who

12
was a teacher in Kansas City, Mo., and who had already served the Association
as Treasurer.  She knew she was my candidate and was perfectly willing to accept
the office, if it were offered to her.  But the morning on which the election
was to take place, she came to me with tears in her eyes and begged me
neither to present her name myself nor allow anybody else to do so.  Her
friends told had told her, she said, that she could not possibly poll enough votes
to elect her and she did not to be slaughtered by the delegates to the
convention, as she had been assured by the aforesaid friends that she would be
Try as hard as I might I could not argue her out of the notion to withdraw her
name.  But I would not promise that I would prevent her name from being presented
to the convention, if anybody else chose to do so.
After the names of several women who had sought the election themselves
had been presented, Mrs. Mosselle of Philadelphia nominated Mrs. Yates for
the presidency in a most eloquent speech and our candidate was elected on the
very first ballot by an overwhelming majority.  This afforded another proof of
the fact that, as a rule, the women of the Convention know those who seek the office
of president mainly to gratify their ambition and refuse to vote for them,
while they recognize and reward women who they know will serve the organization
faithfully and is not seeking it just for the honor her election to it 
will bring.
Before the Buffalo convention closed, the delegates unanimously voted
to make me Honorary President for life and presented me with a silver loving
cup on an ebony stand.  During the term I served as president both before the
adoption of the constitution and throughout the two I served afterward I strove
with all my heart, sould, mind and strength to place the National Association
of Colored Women on a solid foundation and to make its ideals high.  In the 
first years of its existence there were comparitively few colored women who
had had any experience in club work and upon whom I could call for assistance
but the cooperation I received from those who were able to assist
was hearty, genuine, and valuable to the highest degree.  Without the help
given me by these able and loyal co-workers I could never have succeeded
in bring the National Association of Colored Women up to the hight standard
during the first five years of its existence to which it undoubtedly attained.

13
On the Lecture Platform.
My appearance on the lecture platform happened more by accident than by
design.  I really didn't mean to do it.  If I had been questioned about it a
month before I was swept into it by an unexpected and unforeseen event, I 
should probably have expressed a very strong opinion against doing any such
thing.
I was invited to speak to the Congregational Association of Maryland 
and the District of Columbia which was holding a meeting in the First Congregational
Church of Washington, the same church which President and Mrs. Coolidge
attended while they lived in the White House.  Contrary to the custom
I have observed all my life when speaking in public, I used a manuscript and
spoke on the Progress of Colored Women.  After the meeting Mr. Robert Nourse,a 
well known lecturer who lived in Falls Church, Virginia, told me he would like
to talk with me about something very important, and as soon as we were free to
have a private conference, he unburdened his mind.  He told me he had had years
of experience on the lecture platform, that he knew the material out of which
a good lecturer was built when he saw and heard one and that he was certain
I possessed all the qualities which would insure success. Dr. Nourse left nothing
unsaid to me which one human being could say to another so as to encourage
him to undertake an enterprise or engage in a pursuit in which he had previously
had no experience.
The suggestion was literally a thunderclap out of a clear sky to
me., for it had never occurred to me to go on the lecture platform.  When I 
enumerated the obstacles which would prevent me from attempting it, [?]
[?] them all aside and assured me that when I talked with my husband and
mother about it, they would do the same thing.  And this they certainly did.
Judge Terrell agreed with Dr. Nourse that I would be a success on the
lecture platform and reminded me that through the medium of the lecture bureau
I would have a better opportunity of doing the work I had always wanted to do
than by any other method.  For years I had been wishing that the opportunity [way would open]
creating sentiment in favor of our group would be presented to me in some way


14
and it seemed to me that going on the lecture platform would give me the
chance for which I longed.
An offer was made by the Slayton Lyceum Bureau which I accepted with the
understanding that I would never be obliged to remain away from home longer
than three weeks at a time.  Mother declared that she could easily look after
affairs in the home during that length of time and urged me to embrace the opportunity
which had presented to me so miraculously.
I did not have the confidence in my ability which Dr. Nourse and Judge
Terrell possessed.  With fear and trembling I made the decision to appear before
the public as a lecturer.  "But, Dr. Nourse," I remarked one day while we
were all discussing the subject in our family, "I may not be able to say anything
which will either interest or enlighten the public."  "oh, never mind about
that", he replied seriously.  "Maybe you wont. But people never go to hear
what a woman says anyhow.  They simply go to see how she looks."
Mr. Charles Wagner, one of the agents of the Slayton Lyceum Bureau, was
the first to book me.  From the press notices of the addresses which  I had previously
delivered on various occasions he got up a very good circular for me
Neither Mr. Wagner nor any other official of the Slayton Bureau had ever seen
me or heard me speak, when they consented to offer me as one of the attractions 
for the Chautauqua that summer.  So great was their confidence in Dr.
Nourse's ability to "pick em" that they took me on his representation alone.
It was said that up to that time the Bureau had never promised to back a speaker
whom none of the officials had heard till Dr. Nourse persuaded them to try me
out on his recommendation alone.
Mr. Charles Wagner who has since then so successfully managed John
McCormack, the famous tenor,and other celebrities secured for me some very
fine engagements at the leading Chautauquas in the West.  At that time he was
 booking Maud Ballington Booth, William Jennings Bryan and other well known
lecturers, so that my name often appeared on the same program with theirs.
On several occasions I spoke to the same audiences which Tom Dixon addressed.
That Tom Dixon who wrote the Clansman, which as a novel did a great deal of

15

harm. Then when it was filmed as "The Birth of the Nation", it was an instrument
of evil, appealing as it did to race prejudice, inciting to riot and
arousing the murderous passions of the mob.

The following were the four subjects which I offered the Chautauquas:
The Progress of Colored Women, The Bright Side of A Dark Subject, Uncle Sam
and the Sons of Ham and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In my address on our women I referred to the marvellous progress which
they had made and I usually introduced it by saying: "When that small but
noble band of women began an agitation in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 by
which colleges were opened to women and the numerous reforms inaugurated for
the amelioration of their condition along all lines, their sisters who groaned
in bindage had little reason to hope that these blessings would ever brighten
their crushed and blighted lives. For, in those days of oppression and despair
colored women were not only refused admittance to institutions of learning,
but the Law of the States in which the majority lived made it a crime to teach
them to read. Not only could they possess no property, but they did not even
own themselves. So gloomy were their prospects, so pernicious the customs, so
less than fifty years ago. But from the day their fetters were broken and their
minds released from the darkness of ignorance in which they had been held for
nearly three hundred years; from the day they could stand erect in the dignity
of womanhood, no longer bond but free, till to day, colored women have forged
steadily shed in the acquisition of knowledge and in the cultivation of those
graces of character which make for good.

To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the
depths from which they have come, rather than by the heights to which those
blessed with centuries of advantages and opportunities have attained, colored
women need not hang their heads in shame. Consider, if you will, the almost
insurmountable obstacles which have confronted colored women in their efforts
to educate and elevate themselves since their emancipation and I dare assert,
not boastfully, at all, but with pardonable pride, I hope, that the work they
accomplished and the progress they have made will bear favorable comparison
at least, with their more favored sisters from whom the opportunity of acquiring


16

acquiring knowledge and the means of self culture have never been entirely withheld.

For, not only are colored women with aspirations handicapped on account
of their sex, but they are everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their
race. Desperately and continuously they are forced to fight an opposition born
of a cruel, unreasonable prejudice which neither their necessity nor their
merit seems able to subdue. Not only because they are women, but because they
are colored women are discouragement and disappointment meeting them at every
turn. But, in spite of the opposition encountered and the obstacles opposed
to their acquisition of knowledge and their accumulation of wealth, the progress
made by the colored women of their country has never been surpassed by that
of any group of women since the world began."

And then I gave specific instances of the marvellous success achieved
by colored women, as teachers, founders of schools and charitable institutions
of various kinds, such as old folks homes and orpand asylums. I referred to
the public work done by colored women through the medium of the National Association
of Colored Women and through the clubs in the church as well as in
their numerous beneficial organizations.

I emphasized their intellectual and cultural advancement by citing
the splendid records which colored women have made in some of the best institutions
of the land. I discovered that very few white people had ever heard
of Phyllis Wheatley, the African poetess, so I related a few facts about
this remarkable women whose careers reads more like fiction than fact. At
nine years of age she was brought to the United States packed like a sardine
in a slave ship. She was bought by Mrs. John Wheatley who saw her wrapped only
in a piece of carpet shivering on a street one cold, bleak day in Boston.
The Wheatley family discovered that the little slave girl whom they named
Phyllis had a fine mind, allowed her to cultivate it and nine years after she
had been dragged from a slave ship more dead than alive, she had so mastered
the English language that she had written a volume of poems which were published
by her friends in 1773 and which compare favorably with any poems
written by women at that time in the United States.

17

Ever since this little volume appeared titled "Poems on Various Subjects
Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of Mr. John Wheatley of Boston" colored women have
shown decided literary ability from time to time.

Naturally I referred to the huge obstacles which block the colored woman's
path to success in many pursuits in which she would like to engage. And I always
ended with an appeal to the white man's sense of justice, especially in
behalf of the children and the youth of the race.

I have every reason to believe that this address on the Progress and the
Problems of Colored Women did a great deal of good, because it opened the eyes
of many to the difficulties which confront colored women about which they had
neither heard nor thought before. It was a revelation to many who heard for the first time about
the success which colored women had achieved in varied lines of human endeavor
as well as [????] desperate struggles which they were making to forge ahead.

Over and over again people who had been in the audience would wait to talk
with me after the lecture about the facts which had been presented. Desiring
to compliment me they would say "If there were any more colored women like you
there would be no race problem at all. And even if there were one, it could be
quickly solved." When I told them there were many well-educated, highly cultivated
colored women in the United States, they always expressed the greatest
surprise and even though I would give them the names and addresses of some
to whom I referred, they seemed unable to believe that colored women had accomplished
so much. Thus it was that I learned how little the majority of white
people really know about what colored have done and are doing [???] their own
interest and for their own advancement.

The Bright Side of A Dark Subject was an appeal to consider the creditable
things which colored people have done and to talk about that phase of the
subject [????????] dwelling continually upon their backwardness, their defects
and their crimes. "The tendency of the present is such," I said, "as to make
it imperative for those who are really interested in the colored man's welfare
to emphasize his virtues, recount his achievements in the past and to disclose
his chances of future success, rather than exaggerate his vices, recall his

18

ignominy and discredit his ability to keep abreast of the times. The eyesight
of many white people is all right," I said, "until they begin to look at colored
people. But they no sooner fasten their optics upon their brother in
black than they are straightway afflicted with astigmatism, with myopsis, while
they are far-sighted, near-sighted, short-sighted and cross-eyed all combined.

I related the story of the medical student who decided to experiment
upon one of their own number to see what effect imagining one's self to be
ill would have upon the health of an individual who was well. Accordingly several
groups stationed themselves at regular intervals along the route which
they knew the object of their experiment was accustomed to take. As he passed,
the first group simply asked him, if he were ill, to which he replied in the
negative. "Are you not ill?" inquired the second group with evident concern,
"You look so," they added. The third group pretended to be alarmed, when they
saw him and assured him that the pallor of his countenance indicated that he
was far from being well. All the other groups seemed just as shocked at his
appearance and warned him that he had better be looking after his health.

By the time the young men reached the last group, it is said, he was actually
ill and he admitted to his comrades that he was not feeling well. According
to this story which went the rounds of the medical journals a few years ago
this student who was perfectly well, when he started from home to take a walk
was seriously affected physically by the repeated assurances of his classmates
that he was ill. His mind was no deeply impressed and his nerves were so wrought
upon that he took to his bed and died in spite of every effort to save him.

Whether this story is true or not, I told my audience, its application
to the colored man's case is perfectly clear. His intellectual faculties may
be never so strong, his spiritual endowment never so fine and his courage never
so indomitable, still in marching to the goal of his ambition, if the first
group composed of Anglo Saxons halts him with the warning that he is too sick
mentally or morally to reach it; if the second group composed of Doubting
Thomases of his own race (of whom there so many, but I hope no more will grow)
corroborates the first and if all the other groups composed of friends and

19

foes alike join in this same chorus of despair, the whole race may finally
be so inoculated with the poison of doubt, fear and discouragement that all
efforts to save it from ultimate ruin may be in vain. But thanks to the happy
disposition of the Colored-American, it will be a long time before the masses
of us can be seriously affected by this pernicious pessimism which many latter-
day philosophers of both races are trying to dispense. The Lord God of Hosts
knew exactly what he was doing, when he put a smile upon the colored man's
lips and a song in his heart. In spite, therefore, of the hardships and the
humiliations to which some of the best and worthiest of the race are subjected almost
every day, the majority of us still find good and sufficient reasons for looking 
upon the bright side of the problem and we will continue to hope.

In this address I referred to the brilliant success achieved by colored
students at Harvard University, Yale and in other institutions of the North,
East and West. I gave a bried resume of the marvellous military record of
colored soldiers who have fought in all the wars which this country has waged.
The first blood spilled for this country was shed by a colored man. It was
Crispus Attucks, a colored man who first led the American soldiers against the
British troops and who fought desperately for this country till the enemy laid
him low. In Boston there stands to day a monument erected by the citizens of
that commonwealth to commemorate the patriotism and the heroism of that
colored man.

I rejoiced in the financial progress of the Colored-American, and that
while he had been storing his mind with useful knowledge, he had been filling
his pockets as well - filling them honestly, too. I referred especially to the
the charge against the Colored-American that he is innately dishonest and declared
that it is not founded in fact. When I was a student at Oberlin College I heard several
missionaries state that in Africa theft is practically unknown and that the natives
do not learn to steal until they come into close contact with other races.
There is no doubt, therefore, I declared, that from our African forefathers
we have inherited the stricted honesty and that if we had developed a penchant

20

for laying heavy hands on their neighbor's property, this was an acquired rather
than an inherited taste.

Among the reasons I cited for believing that as a group we would ultimately
be able to work out our own salvation and triumph over the obstacles
against which we were then and still are contending to day was the fact that we are more and more learning
the advantage of uniting our forces and helping ourselves. The lesson of unity
is being slowly but surely learned, I said, and nothing impresses its utility
and its necessity upon us more than that very prejudice of which we as a race
so justly complain. From the many evils born of prejudice and proscription, however, we
are learning lessons which could be taught us, perhaps in no other way, and we
are gaining a kind of strength which could to us from no other source.

After a brief reference to the race's progress from every point of view
I concluded this address on The Bright Side of A Dark Subject as follows:

Then we'll forward with brave hearts and true,
As we climb, let us lift from below,
Let no soul be left in the dark,
As onward and upward we go.

Success we've achieved in the past,
To day we are hopeful and strong,
For blossoms and buds of desire
Will burst into fruitage ere long.

In the address entitled "Uncle Sam and the Sons of Ham" I dwelt upon
the government's relations to the race. I presented some shocking facts concerning
the Convict Lease System, the Contract Labor System and the wholesale
of disfranchisement of colored people in that section where the majority live.
But I took occasion even in this address to refer briefly to the progress
which the race had made. No matter what my subject was I never allowed an opportunity
ot presenting facts creditable to us as a group to pass.

I believe it is the duty of every speaker who makes a specialty of
discussing the race problem, no matter what the color of the audience may be
to emphasize the fact that we have taken long strides ahead. As soon as I
was fairly launched on the lecture bureau I decided never to crack a joke at
the colored man's expense. Nothing displeases and disgists me more

21

than to hear a colored speaker relate stories or crack jokes at the colored
which make his race appear ridiculous, cowardly or light-fingered. Nobody
could be more fed up on the chicken and watermelon-stealing jokes than I am.

The address on Harriet Beecher Stowe was truly a labor of love. I enjoyed
nothing more than to deliver it to audiences who wanted to hear it.
And it is a great satisfaction to me to recall how genuine and cordial were
the expressions of appreciation which those who heard it bestowed upon it.
I poured my very heart's blood into it when I wrote it I poured out my soul
when I relivered it.

The press comments which appeared in the leading papers in the places
where I spoke were always complimentary in the extreme. Usually there were
great headlines announcing my appearance and my subject before I spoke and still bigger ones after
I delivered the address, I do not see how greater praise could have been bestowed
upon a speaker than was given me. I marveled at the space devoted to
a resume of my talks, even when I had to compete with that incomparable orator
and that most beautiful women, Maud Ballington Booth.

In announcing my appearance with big headlines the Winona Indiana Assembly
Review called me "Queen of the Race, the Leading Colored Woman of the World"
and printed enconiums from the press on my training, the work I had done and
the success I had achieved on the lecture platform. The Clarinda Iowa Herald's
opening comment after I had delivered an address was as follows: "Mrs. Mary
Church Terrell has come and spoken and conquered. She came on Tuesday afternoon.
She delivered her address on the work of colored women a short time after
she arrived, and last evening she was the lionness of the hour. She won all
by her beautiful unassuming manner, her sweet face and her stirring, inspiring
words. Her appeal for justice to her brethren and sisters was powerful and
pathetic. It is in the first time a [?lrinda] audience has heard Mrs. Terrell and
now that we have heard her on our own platform we feel highly honored. By her
words she has given the people of Clrinda and vicinity a higher regard for
the colored race, and inspired them to feel that justice and equality must be
granted to the weaker people. Mrs. Terrell's subject this evening will be

22

Harriet Beecher Stowe. At least 2,500 people listened to her lecture Tuesday
afternoon, in spite of the great heat. Mrs. Terrell is a handsome woman - a wonderful
woman. Her race has cause to be very proud that they have such a woman.
among them."

"She Won All Hearts" was another headline in the press report of my talk
at a Chautauqua in the West. "The colored race need no better proof of its
bright side than the existence of a woman like Mrs. Church Terrell," was the
opening sentence. "Graceful, magnetic, bearing the unmistakeable stamp of [b???]
culture, education and refinement, a woman whose vast knowledge of her own and
other races left her far above the average woman of whatever color, she stood
upon the platform yesterday and captured the hearts of her audience."

The Danville Illionois Daily News declared "Mrs. Terrell well deserves
the title "The Female Booker T Washington," tho she needs not the title to
aid her to the intellectual and oratorical world. Her addresses are the pure
gold with less dross of nonsense than any lecturer that has come upon the stage
of this Chautauqua. From the first to the last she has something to say, and
says it as a cultured ladu, in the best of English, which has no tinge of the
hifalutin or the sensational. Such speakers are rare. She should be paid to
travel as a model of good English and good manners."

I considered that high praise indeed to be bestowed upon any woman, particularly
upon a woman of African descent, for some of the most famous lecturers
of the country had appeared at that particular Chautauqua. I doubt that
it would be possible for me or any other colored woman to receive such complimentary
notices in the press of this country at the present time.

Although I was warned by some of my friends not to present certain facts
showing the injustice and brutality to which colored people are sometimes subjected,
for fear it might do more harm than good, I felt that I could be true
neither to myself nor to my race, if I did not touch upon this phase of the
subject. I never failed, therefore, to tell the truth about the barbarities
perpetrated upon representatives of the race, when I discussed the problem.
For that reason the following comment upon my address pleased me greatly:

23

Saturday's Asembly closed with an address by the colored orator, Mary Church
Terrell of Washington on "The Bright Side of a Dark Subject." She fired no
pyrotechnics. She touched lightly on southern bonfire lit with living, human
flesh. She only incidentally hinted at the flaying of live negroes and other
holiday sports whereby the "superior race" whiles away the festive hour,  The
whole discourse was lacking in all efforts at blood-curdling and blood-boiling
effects:"

I was glad to see that it is possible to present the facts concerning
the injustice and brutality of which colored people are often the victims without
being misrepresented and denounced by the press for exaggerating and tearing
passion to tatters for effect. Never, from the minute I first stepped upon
the lecture platform till to day have I made any effort whatsoever to induce
newspaper men to give me write ups of any kind. The favorable, complimentary
notices which I received at their hands were given me gratuitously. I doubt
very much that I or any other colored woman could exert enough influence or
bring enough pressure to bear upon newspaper reporters to induce them unduly
to bestow praise where it did not belong.


24

Notable Lecture Engagements

During my career on the lecture platform I have spoken for individuals
of all classes, ages and kinds and for organizations founded for almost every
purpose imaginable. I have spoken literally from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and from Canada to the Gulf. For instance, I once spoke in New York City for
Marcus Garvey, when he was just beginning to preach his doctrine of Africa
for the Africans, before he became so amitious as to try to buy a steamer
on which adventurous colored people could sail from the United States to
the homes of their ancestors in Africa.

In the New England States especially I have been invited to deliver addresses
for the Young Men's Cristian Association. I seized these opportunities
eagerly, It was a fine chance to present certain facts to the wide-awake
responsive men who at that time usually attended the Sunday afternoon meetings
and who always seemed to me to be open to conviction, no matter what
subject was discussed nor what opinion the speaker expressed.

Addressing the Forum meetings in some of the New England States also gave
me an excellent opportunity of imparting information to those who were really interested
in the Race Problem and who knew unbelievably little about it. But my experience
at the Ford Hall meeting in Boston stands out conspicuously in my
mind. I had been invited by Mr. George Coleman who was then president of the
organization to address a Sunday evening meeting and I cheerfully accepted
the invitation. I had met Mr. and Mrs. Coleman in Atlanta, Georgia, when I
delivered an address at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Spellman
Seminary in which they were both deeply interested, and which was then the
largest school for colored girls, not only in the United States, but in the
whole world. John D. Rockefeller was one of the principal patrons of the
school, because an aunt or some other member of his family had been one of
the founders.

Mrs. Coleman entertained me in her home, when I came to fill this Ford
Hall engagement and invited some of her friends to dine with us Sunday after
noon. During the conversation at the table one of the guests asked me if I

25 

felt equal to answering all the questions the audience would ask me that night. 
Although I had often heard about the Sunday evening meetings which were held 
in Ford Hall, for some reason or other I did not know that people in the audience 
were accustomed to ask the speaker to answer any questions which they 
wished. When I learned that was the custom at that dinner table, if I had been 
given to fainting, I should certainly have fallen out in a fit. No human being 
could have possibly dreaded an ordeal more than I did that to which I knew I 
should be subjected within a few hours, unless it be one condemned to be electrocuted 
or hanged at the expiration of that time. If I could have run away 
somewhere and broken the engagement without being disgraced myself and disgracing 
the race in the bargain, I should have done so. But a colored woman 
who loves her race and wants to help give it a good reputation is always careful 
to do nothing which will bring it into disrepute, no matter how great the 
sacrifice to avoid doing so may be. 

But, like most ordeals in this world it was not nearly so terrible 
as I anticipated it would be. To tell the truth I enjoyed it immensely. It 
was easy to answer the questions, because most of them were so simple that 
any colored person who had thought seriously about the problem at all could
have answered them with ease. I had not realized till then how little even 
intelligent white people know about conditions which confront our colored 
group. The experience at Ford Hall in this respect was duplicated every time 
I addressed a Forum audience, when the speaker was requested to answer questions 
which the audience propounded. It mattered not whether I spoke in Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, Rhode Island or New York the questions asked were 
practically the same and the evidence that those intelligent people possessed
comparatively little knowledge about the race problem was equally convincing. 

At every meeting invariably somebody asked me what I thought about 
the intermarriage of the races. That seemed to agitate the minds of my auditors - 
particularly the men - more than anything else. "Do you think it is 
right or wise for white people to marry colored people," was asked me every 
time I spoke and was expected to reply to questions put to me by those who     


155

But once it was impossible for me to respond to this call, and as the
fates would have it on that very day several women were arrested for picketing 
and sent to Occoquan, when I was absent from my post. 

The following letter dated January 20, 1921 notified me that a pin was to 
be presented to me along with others for the service I had rendered the cause.   

"Dear Fellow Picket", it read, "The National Woman's Party wishes to present to each 
woman who has ever picketed, whether she was imprisoned or not, 
a picket pin in memory of our picket days together. We will present these pins 
on the evening of February 18th during our national convention which meets in 
Washington February 15th and late through February 18th. We hope to make the 
ceremony of giving the pins a dignified and impressive one and want, by this ceremony, 
to show appreciation of the militant workers in our campaign of whom we 
are all proud. We ask each picket to wear upon this evening a white dress, and, 
if possible, white shoes and stockings. A room will be provided adjoining the 
hall in which wraps may be left during the ceremony." 

And so it happened that on February 18th, 1921, both my daughter, Phyllis, 
and myself were each presented a pin at the Washington Hotel by the National 
Women's Party, because we helped picket the White House as a protest against the 
disenfranchisement of women. There is no doubt that this gesture on the part of 
group of determined women called attention to the injustice perpetrated upon 
them by denying them the suffrage and hastened the passage of the 19th amendment.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.