SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE           A Colored Woman in a White 
                                                           World (18)

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gown was a yellow faille trimmed with white lace.  I had a red cashmere
dress and a maroon broadcloth made quite plain and tailored.  Blue has always
been my favorite color, because I thought it was more becoming than 
any other.  I cannot understand now why I did not have a blue dress in my
trousseau.
My mother insisted that I should have a maroon velvet hat to
go with the broadcloth dress of that shade and I agreed with her.  But I
could not find one anywhere.  Finally my mother went with me.  She found
one that suited her on Fifth Avenue and paid twenty dollars for it.  I 
was horrified and wretched.  I had never paid that much for a hat in my
life and I did not think it was right for a woman in moderate circumstances
to put so much money into one.  Especially did I object to the 
price paid for that particular specimen, for it was a little affair shaped
somewhat like a bonnet and made of velvet with two gilt ball-shaped ornaments
stuck on each side of the front.  I have never paid so much for a hat since 
then and I have not even been tempted to do so.  Early in life I learned
that paying a large sum for a hat or a frock was no guarantee that it
would be becoming.
We were married about six o'clock in the evening.  I was ready
about five minutes before the hour.  For years afterward, whenever he had
to wait for me to go anywhere, Mr. Terrell reminded me that at least on one
occasion in our lives I took good pains to be ready in ample time.
My father insisted on having a regular feast, anything I might
say to the contrary notwithstanding.  He served turkey, roast pig, several
kinds of salad, ice cream and wine to a large number of guests. " As they
discussed the elaborate menu", said the Memphis Commercial Appeal, one of
the largest newspapers in the South,  "and drank the excellent champagne
of the host, the guests were regaled with the sensuous strains of Joe Hall's
orchestra, which, hidden in an alcove, made the air sweet with its beautiful
music."
About ten o'clock the same evening we took the train for New York
to go see my mother who had been living there for a long time.  She
told me that she had dressed herself exactly as she would have done if she
had actually attended the wedding and at the hour she knew her daughter
was being married she imagined she was listening to the ceremony and taking
part in it.   From New York we went to Boston, remained there a short time
and then returned to Washington where Mr. Terrell resumed his duties as
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Chief of the Division in the Fourth Auditor's office of the Treasury 
Department.
From every section of the United States friends of both races
sent us presents.  I do not agree with those who say that one cannot love
an inanimate object, for I have a real affection for every wedding present
I possess.  As I looked over them not long ago it occurred to me that for
entirely different reasons two of them are very interesting indeed.  One
of them is a sterling silver cream pitcher which was presented to us by
the grandson of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States.
T. Jefferson Coolidge, the donor, was one of my husband's classmates whom
he held in the highest esteem.
The other present consists of a half dozen sterling silver
oyster forks and recalls an awful tragedy, the brutal murder of the donor,
Tom Moss, one of my best friends.  We were children together and he was always
invited to the parties which my parents gave me as a child.  For many 
years he was a letter carrier, but he saved his money and with several
other colored men he opened a store in the suburbs of Memphis.  Then the
colored people who came from the country stopped trading at a store kept
by a white man across the street, and began to patronize Tom Moss, because
the supplies he sold were more reasonable and exactly what they were 
represented to be, while the patrons themselves were treated right.
So angry did the white store keeper and some of his friends 
in the neighborhood become that they decided to break up Tom Moss's store
and deliberately started a row to do so.  They called in the police who
placed the owners of the colored store in jail and the next night all
three were taken out by a mob and shot to death.  Thus Tom Moss, who left
a wife and several children, together with two others was murdered, because
they were succeeding too well.  They were guilty of no other crime
but that.
I had read of such lynchings before, and had been deeply stirred
by them.  A normal human being is always shocked, when he reads that a
man or woman has been burned at the stake or shot to death, whether he is
acquainted with the victim or not.  But when a woman has been closely associated
with the victim of the mob from childhood and knows him to be above
reproach, the horror and anguish which rend her heart are indescribable.
For a time it came near upsetting my faith in the Christian

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Religion. I could not see how a crime like that could be perpetrated in a 
Christian country, while thousands of Christians sinfully winked at it by
making no protest against it loud enough to be heard nor exerting any
earnest effort to redress this terrible wrong.  I thoroughly understood
Abraham Lincoln's state of mind when he refused to join church in Springfield,
Illinois, because only three out of twenty ministers in the whole
city stood with him in his effort to free the slave.
No one can be more grateful to the church for the assistance it
has rendered the Colored-American than I am.  Nothing but ignorance or
malice could prompt one to disparage the efforts put forth by the churches
in the colored man's behalf.  However unfortunate may have have been the attitude of many
of the churches on the question of slavery before the Civil War, from the
moment the shackles fell from the black man's limbs to the present day,
the American church has been most kind and generous in its treatment of
the maligned and struggling race.  But, in the face of so much lawlessness
today,surely there is a role for the Church Militant to play.  When one
reflects upon the large number of Colored Americans who are yearly hurled
into eternity, unshriven by priest and untried by law, one can not help
realizing that as a nation we have fallen upon very grave times indeed.
Surely it is time for the ministers in their pulpits and the Christians
in their pews to fall upon their knees and pray for deliverance from this
rising flood of barbarism which threatens to deluge the whole land.  The
colored man's loyalty to the Christian religion in spite of the outrages 
and crimes perpetrated upon him by people who call themselves Christians
is one of the most striking and beautiful exhibitions of faith which it
is possible to cite.
The summer after my marriage I was desperately ill and my
life was despaired of .  My recovery was nothing short of a miracle and my
case is recorded in medical history.  In five years we lost three babies,
one after another, shortly after birth.  This was a great blow to Mr. Terrell
and myself.  The maternal instinct was always abnormally developed in me.
As far back as I can remember, I have been very fond of children. I cannot 
recall that I have ever seen a baby, no matter what its color, class or
condition in life, no matter whether it was homely or beautiful according 
to recognized standards, no matter whether it was clad in rags or wore
dainty dimity, that it did not seem dear and cunning to me.
When my third baby died two days after birth, I literally
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sank down into the very depths of despair.  For months I could not divert
my thoughts from the tragedy, no matter how hard I tried.  It was impossible
for me to read understandingly or to fix my mind on anything I saw in
print.  When I reached the bottom of a page in a book, I knew no more about
its contents than did someone who had never seen it.
Right after its birth the baby had been placed in an improvised 
incubator and I was tormented by the thought that if the genuine article
had been used, its little life might have been saved.  I could not help
feeling that some of the methods employed in caring for my baby had 
caused its untimely end.
A few of my friends could not understand how a woman could
grieve so deeply as I did over the death of a baby that had lived only a
few days.  But I sometimes think that a woman suffers as much, when she
loses a baby at birth, as does a mother who loses a baby she has enjoyed
much longer.  There is the bitter disappointment of never having enjoyed
the infant at all to whose coming the mother has looked forward for so
long and upon which she has built such fond hopes.
Acting upon my physician's advice my husband insisted upon having
me leave home, where everything reminded me of my sorrow and I went
to visit my dear, sunny mother in New York.  She would not allow me to talk
about my baby's death and scouted the idea that its life might have been
saved.  This short visit to my mother with her cheerful disposition and infectious
laugh did much for me physically, mentally and spiritually.  Many
a human being has lost his reason, because he has allowed himself to brood
over his trouble indefinitely, when a slight change of scene and companionship
might have saved it.  I do not like to think what might have happened
to me, if I had not left home and gone to see my mother at that crucial
time in my life.
A few months after my baby's death a thought which occurred to 
me one day while I was in a paroxysm of grief helped to reconcile me to
my loss.  While I was happily expecting his arrival, the lynching of Tom
Moss, to which I have already referred, occurred.  The mob's murder of my
friend affected me deeply, and for a long time I could think of nothing
else.  It is one thing to read that some colored man of whom you have 
never heard has been the victim of mob violence and quite another to 
know that a good friend has suffered such a cruel fate.
   As I was grieving over the loss of my baby boy one day, it

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occurred to me that under the circumstances it might be a blessed
dispensation of Providence 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 affected the unborn child. Who can tell how
many desperadoes and murderers have been born to colored mothers who had
been shocked and distracted before the birth of their babies by the news
that some relative or friend had been burned alive or shot to death by a 
mob?
I was also impressed by a statement made by one of my white
friends who happened to meet me on the street one day after I was bereaved.
" I do not see how any colored woman," she said, " can make up her
mind to become a mother under the existing conditions in the United States.
Under the circumstances," she continued, " I should think that a colored
woman would feel that she was perpetrating a great injustice upon any
helpless infant that she would bring into the world." I had never heard
that point of view so frankly and strongly expressed before, and while I
could not agree with it entirely, it caused me much serious reflection.
The more I thought how my depression, which was caused by the lynching of
Tom Moss,and the horror of this awful crime,might have injuriously affected
my unborn child, if he had lived, the more I became reconciled to what had
at first seemed a cruel fate.
Years afterward I marched through the streets of Washington in
a silent parade staged by the colored people as a protest against lynching
of members of our race. This was an effort to influence Congress to
pass the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Not a band played. Not a sound of music
was heard. As I walked in silence up Pennsylvania Avenue, I thought of the
fine boy whom I knew as a girl who had been brutally lynched,when he became 
a man, and I said to myself there is at least one person participating 
in this protest parade who understands personally exactly what it 
means.

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Chapter 15
Some Metes and Bounds.
If I were a white woman this part of my autobiography would not
have to be written. But it is my duty to the reader and myself to des-
cribe the conditions under which I have lived in my home town for forty
years. I might say, " today I was hungry and could get nothing to eat
while I was down town shopping; today I wanted to go to see a great actor,
or to hear a renowned singer and could not do so." But instead of relat-
ing instance after instance I shall simply state on general principles
what it means to be a colored woman in the Capital of the United States.
Washington,D.C. has been called"The Colored Man's Paradise."
This sobriquet must have been given to it in bitter irony by some mem-
ber of the handicapped race as he reviewed his persecutions and rebuffs.
Or, it might have been given immediately after the Civil War by an ex-
slave-holder who for the first time in his life saw colored people walk-
ing about like freemen, minus the overseer and his whip. It is certain
it would be difficult to find a worse misnomer for Washington than " The
Colored Man's Paradise," if one had any regard for the truth.
I have resided in Washington for forty years,and while it was
far from being a paradise for colored people when I first touched its
shores, it has been doing its level best ever since to make conditions
for us intolerable. As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night,
a stranger in a strange land,and walk miles without finding a place to
lay my head. Unless I happened to know colored people who lived here or
ran across a colored man or woman who could recommend a colored boarding
house or hotel to me I should be obliged to spend the night wandering a-
bout. Indians, Chinamen, Filipinos, Japanese and representatives of any
other dark race can find hotel accommodations if they can pay for them.
The colored man or woman is the only one thrust out of the hotels of the
National Capital like a leper.
As a colored woman, I may walk from the Capitol to the White
House ravenously hungry and abundantly supplied with money with which to
purchase a meal, without finding a single restaurant in which I would be
permitted to take a morsel of food, if it was patronized by white people,
unless I were willing to sit behind a screeen.[sic] As a colored woman, I can
not visit George Washington's home and last resting place without being
forced to sit in a Jim Crow section of an electric car which starts from

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the very heart of the city, midway between the Capitol and the White 
House. If I refuse to be thus humiliated, I am cast into jail and forced 
to pay a fine for violating the Virginia laws. Every hours in the day Jim 
Crow cars enter and leave the city. Colored people, many of [them] whom are 
intelligent and well-to-do, are forced to ride on them. With a part of 
friends I boarded the Mount Vernon car one day and we refused to sit in 
the rear seats to which colored people are relegated. But, after we had 
been riding about seven minutes and had reached the Highway Bridge the 
conductor ordered us to move to the back seat. We all left the car and returned 
home rather than submit to that humiliation.
As a colored woman I may enter more than one white church in 
Washington without receiving that welcome which any human being has a 
right to expect in the sanctuary of God. Sometimes the usher is suddenly 
stricken with a peculiar kind of color blindness which prevents a dark 
face from making any impression on his retina, so that it is impossible 
for him to see a colored person at all. Or, if his eyesight is normal, he 
will keep these dusky Christians, who have had the temerity to thrust themselves 
into a temple where only the fair of face are expected to worship 
God, waiting a long time. Then he will ungraciously show them to a seat in 
the rear, the Jim Crow bench in the House of God.
There is no way for me to earn an honest living in the National 
Capital, unless I am willing to be a domestic servant, if I am not a trained 
nurse, or a dressmaker or can secure a position in the public schools. 
This is exceedingly difficult to do, for, as a rule in every city the supply 
of colored women teachers is greater than the demand. It matters not what 
my intellectual attainments may be or how great may be the need of the services 
of a competent person, if I try to enter many of the numerous vocations 
in which my white sisters are allowed to engage, the door is shut in 
my face.
I can not go to see the plays which I should like to attend and 
I can not hear the operas and the artists I long to hear, unless I am willing 
to be Jim Crowed in the theaters. From several Washington theatres 
and from all the white movies colored people are excluded altogether. I 
once telephone to the ticket seller just before the matinee and asked if 
a good-looking, neat-appearing colored nurse would be allowed to sit in the 
parquet with her little white charge, and the answer rushed quickly,


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positively through the receiver, "No!" When I remonstrated a bit and
told him that in some of the theatres in the South colored nurses were
allowed to sit with the white children for whom they cared, the ticket
seller told me that in Washington it was very poor policy to employ colored
nurses. They are excluded from many places where white girls would be
allowed to take children for pleasure, he said.
There is not a single art school of repute which will admit a
colored woman. A few years ago one of my friends who possessed great
talent submitted some drawings to the Corcoran Art School, of Washington,
which were accepted by the Committee of Awards, who sent her a ticket
entitling her to a course in the school. But when the Committee discovered
that my friend was colored they refused to admit her. Without mincing
matters at all they told her that if they had suspected her drawings were
made by a colored woman they would not have examined them. The efforts of
Frederick Douglass and a lawyer of great repute,who took a keen interest
in the affair, were unavailing.
In order to cultivate her talent this young woman was forced to
leave her home in Washington and incur the expense of going to New York
which she could ill afford. She entered the Woman's Art School of Cooper
Union, graduated with honor and then went to Paris to continue her studies,
where she achieved signal success and was complimented by some of the
greatest artists in France.
There is not a single white college in the national capital which
will admit me or any other colored person. It matters not how great the
ability, how lofty the ambition,how unexceptionable the character or how
great the thirst for knowledge may be, the door of educational opportunity
is slammed in [a colored person's] my face.
Some years ago both the Columbian Law School and the Catholic
University admitted colored students, but in deference to the Southern
white students the authorities decided to exclude them altogether.
A young woman who had already attracted attention in the literary
world by her volume of short stories answered an advertisement
which appeared in a Washington newspaper. It called for the services of
a skilled stenographer and expert typist. The applicants were requested
to send specimens of their work and answer certain questions concerning
their experience and their speed before they called in person. The young
colored woman, who,by the way, was fair and very attractive, received a

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letter from the firm stating that her references were the most satisfactory
 that had been submitted and requesting her to call.

When she presented herself there was some doubt in the mind of the 
man to whom she was directed concerning her racial pedigree, so he asked 
her point blank whether she was colored or white. When she confessed the 
truth the merchant expressed great sorrow and deep regret that he could 
not avail himself of the services of so competent a person. He frankly 
admitted that employing a colored woman in his establishment in any except 
a menial position was simply out of the question.

One of my daughters had a similar experience. She answered an advertisement 
and was appointed a clerk in the credit department of a large 
department store where we had traded for years. Her father had often assisted 
the head of the firm by advising him gratuitously concerning matters 
which the latter did not care to take into the courts. Without the knowledge 
of either one of us she secured this position on her merit. But she 
had been employed less than a week before she was called to the office of 
the manager and questioned concerning her race. An employe of the store 
who was well acquainted with our family had reported that a colored girl 
was working in the credit department and had told who she was. Then my 
young daughter promptly lost her job. Naturally it shook me to the very 
foundation of my being to see her the victim of such cruel race prejudice, 
but I was helpless to shield her from the embarrassment and humiliation 
to which she had been subjected.

In order to get a good job one of my young friends left Washington 
and went to New York. There she worked her way up in one of the largest 
dry good stores till she was placed as a saleswoman in the cloak department. 
Tired of being separated from her family she decided to return to 
Washington,feeling sure that, with her experience and her fine recommendations 
from the New York firm,she could easily secure employment. Nor was 
she overconfident ,for the proprietor of one of the largest dry goods 
store in her native city was glad to secure the services of a young woman 
who had brought such glowing credentials from New York.

She had not been in this store very long,however, before she called 
upon me one day and asked me to intercede with the proprietor in her 
behalf. She had just been discharged that afternoon because it had been 
discovered that she was colored. When I called upon my young friend's employer 
he made no effort to avoid the issue, as I had feared he would. 

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He did not say that he had discharged the your woman because she had not 
given satisfaction, as he might easily have done. On the contrary, he admitted 
without the slightest hesitation that the young woman he had just 
discharged one of the best clerks he had ever had. In the cloak department 
where he had been assigned, she had been a brilliant success,he 
said.

" But I cannot keep Miss. Smith in my employ," he concluded. " Are 
you not master of your own store?" I ventured to enquire. The proprietor 
of the store was a Jew,and I felt it was particularly cruel, unnatural 
and cold-blooded for the representative of one oppressed and persecuted 
race to deal so harshly and unjustly with a member of another. I had intended 
to make this point when I decided to intercede for my young friend, 
but when I thought how a reference to the persecution of his own race 
would wound his feelings,the words froze on my lips. 

" When I first heard your friend was colored," he explained, "I 
did not believe it and said so to the clerks who made the statement. 
Finally the girls who had been most pronounced in their opposition to 
working in a store with a colored girl came to me in a body and threatened 
to strike. Strike away, I told them, your places can easily be filled. 
Then they started on another tack. Delegation after delegation began to 
file down to my office, and some of the women were my very best customers, 
to protest against my employing a colored girl. Moreover, they threatened 
to boycott my store if I did not discharge her at once. Then it became a 
question of bread and butter with me and I yielded to the inevitable, that's 
all. Now," he said, concluding, "if I lived in a great cosmopolitan city 
like New York, I should do as I pleased, and refuse to discharge a girl 
simply because she was colored."

That recalled to my mind a similar incident that happened in 
New York. I remembered that a colored woman, as fair as a lily and as 
beautiful as Madonna, who was the head saleswoman in a large department 
store in New York, had been discharged, after she had held this position 
for years, when the proprietor accidentally discovered that a fatal drop of 
African blood was percolating through her veins.

I can secure no employment in the Washington stores except as a 
menial. During the World War colored girls ran the elevators in some of 
the department stores. But after the war when the Minimum Wage Committee 
decided that working girls should receive a certain amount for their services

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services, colored girls were dismissed in most of the stores, because there 
was a strong sentiment against giving them as much as $16 per week. In a 
few stores colored girls still run the elevators, but in the majority of 
cases these jobs have been given to white girls. In one large store no 
colored girl is employed who has not graduated from the Normal School.
As customers colored women are not infrequently treated with 
discourtesy both by the clerks and by the proprietor himself. There is 
a restaurant in one of the largest and best department stores in the city. 
It was established by a man who hailed from Boston, once the home of 
William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner, if my memory 
serves me right. A colored teacher, good-looking, well dressed and fair 
took a seat at one of the tables in the restaurant of this Boston man's 
store. She sat unnoticed for a long time. Finally she asked a waiter who 
passed by her if they would not take her order. She was quickly informed 
that colored people could not be served in that restaurant and was obliged 
to leave, in confusion and shame, much to the amusement of the waiters and 
guests who had noticed the incident. Shortly after that a teacher in Howard 
University, one of the best schools for colored youth in the country, was 
similarly insulted in the restaurant of that same store.
In one of the Washington theatres from which colored people are 
excluded altogether, members of the race have been viciously assaulted 
several times. The proprietor knows well that colored people have no redress 
for such discrimination against them, in the District Courts. A 
colored clerk in one of the departments bought a ticket for the parquet 
of this theatre in which colored people are nowhere welcome. Incidentally, 
this clerk looks more like his paternal ancestors who fought in the lost 
cause than his grandmothers who were the victims of the "peculiar institution." 
He also bought a ticket for his mother who was noticeably swarthy. 
The usher refused to allow the young man to take the seats for which his 
tickets called and tried to snatch the coupons from him. A scuffle ensued 
and both mother and son were ejected by force. A suit was brought against 
the proprietor, who lost the case. The damages awarded the injured man and 
his mother amounted to the munificent sum of one cent. One of the teachers 
in the Colored High School, who went to see a play which would help him in 
his class work, was similarly treated in the same theatre, but he did not 
sue the proprietor.
When my daughters were children one of their little friends 

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figured in one of the most pathetic instances of which I have ever heard. 
[A member of my family] My husband who was very fond of children promised to take six little girls in his neighborhood to a matinee. It happened that he himself 
and five of his little friends were fair enough to pass muster, as 
they stood in judgement before the ticket-seller and the ticket-taker. 
Three of the little girls were sisters, two of them were very fair and 
the other a bit brown. Just as this little girl, who happened to be last 
in the procession, went by the ticket-taker, that argus-eyed, sophisticated 
gentleman detected something which caused a deep, dark frown to mantle 
his brow and he did not let her pass. "I guess you have made a mistake," 
he called to the host of the party. "Those little girls," pointing to the 
fair ones, "may be admitted, but this one," designating the brown one, 
"cannot."
But the colored man was quite equal to the emergency. Fairly 
frothing at the mouth with indignation he asked the ticket-taker what he 
meant to insinuate about that particular little girl. "Do you mean to 
tell me?" he [shouted with rage] calmly asked, "that I must go to the Philipine Islands 
to bring this child to the United States and then I can't take her to a 
theatre in the National Capital?" This little ruse succeeded brilliantly, 
as he knew it would. "Beg your pardon," said the ticket-taker, "I don't 
know what I was thinking about. Of course she can go in."
"What was the matter with me this afternoon? Mother." asked 
the little brown girl, innocently, when she mentioned the affair at home. 
"Why did the man at the theatre let my two sisters and the other girls 
in and try to keep me out?" The child's mother related this incident to 
me and told me her little girl's question unnerved her completely, for a 
time. It showed such blissful ignorance of the depressing, cruel conditions 
which confronted her and which she would have to face continually, so soon, 
she said.
White and colored teachers are under the same Board of Education 
and the system for the children of both races is said to be uniform. Nevertheless, 
race prejudice bobs up to tease the colored teachers every now and 
then. From 1870 to 1900 there was a colored superintendent at the head of 
the colored schools. During all that time the directors of the cooking, sewing, 
physical culture, manual training, music and art departments were colored 
people. A change was made. The colored superintendent was legislated out 
of office and the directorships, without a single exception, were taken from

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colored teachers and given to the white ones. There was no complaint about the colored directors work, no more than is heard about every officer in every school. The directors of several departments were particularly fine. Now, no matter how competent or superior the colored teachers in our public schools may be, they know that they can never rise to the height of a directorship. They can never hope to be more than an assistant and receive the salary therefor, unless the present regime is radically changed.
One of the most distinguished kindergartners in the country came to deliver a course of lectures in Washington some years ago. The colored teachers were eager to attend, but they could not buy the coveted privilege for love or money. They appealed to the director of kindergartens and were told that the expert kindergartner had come to Washington under the auspices of private individuals, so that she could not possible have them admitted. But one of the white teachers realized what a loss her colored colleagues had sustained in being deprived the information and the inspiration which these lectures afforded, so she volunteered to repeat them as best she could for the benefit of the colored teachers for half the price she had herself paid, and the proposition was eagerly accepted by some.
For years strenuous efforts have been made to run Jim Crow street cars in the National Capital. "Resolved that a Jim Crow law should be adopted and enforced in the District of Columbia," was once the subject of a discussion engaged in by the Columbian Debating Society of the George Washington University in our national capital, and the decision was rendered in favor of the affirmative. When Senator Heflin of Alabama, who was recently defeated for reelection to the United States Senate, was a representative in Congress, he introduced a bill providing for Jim Crow street cars in the District of Columbia. He received a letter form the President of the East Brookland Citizens Association "indorsing the movement for separate street cars and sincerely hoping that you will be successful in getting this enacted into a law as soon as possible." Brookland is a suburb of Washington. But Heflin of Alabama is not the only man in Congress who has introduced a bill to force colored people in the National Capital to ride in certain seats provided for them. It is a sort of indoor sport often indulged in by men who represent in the National Congress that intersection of the country in which Jim Crow laws and similar products are 
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indigenous to the soil. Once Senator Heflin was so incensed at seeing a colored man in a Washington street car that he shot at him, but struck a white man, who came near dying of the wound which he inflicted.
In Washington the colored laborer's path to a decent livelihood is by no means smooth. Into some of the trade unions he is admitted, while from others he is excluded altogether. By the white union men this is sometimes denied. But I am personally acquainted with skilled workmen who tell me they are not admitted to the unions because they are colored. Even when they are allowed to join the unions they frequently derive little benefit, owing to certain tricks of the trade. When the word passes around that help is needed and colored laborers apply, they are often told by the union officials that they have secured all the help they needed. The jobs are reserved for white men, and colored men must remain idle, unless the supply of white men is too small.
I am personally acquainted with one of the most skillful laborers in the hardware business in Washington. for forty years he worked for the same firm. He told me he could not join the union, and that his employer had been almost forced to discharge him, because the union men threatened to boycott his store if he did not. If another man could have been found to take his place, he would have lost his job, he said. When no other human being can bring a refactory chimney or balking stove to its senses, this colored man is called upon as the court of last appeal. If he fails to subdue it, it is pronounced a hopeless case at once. And yet this expert workman receives much less for his services than do white men who cannot compare with him in his skill.
And so I might go on citing instance after instance to show the variety of ways in which our group is sacrificed on the altar of prejudice in the Capital of the United States and how huge are the obstacles which block the colored man's path to success. Early in life many a colored youth is so appalled, by the helplessness and the hopelessness of the situation in this country, that in a sort of stoical despair he resigns himself to his fate. When I taught in the High School in Washington the thoughtful boys would sometimes come to me and say, "What is the good of our trying to acquire an education? We can't all be preachers, teachers, doctors and lawyers. Besides those profession there is almost nothing for colored men to do but engage in the most menial occupations, and we do not need an education for that." Such remarks were uttered by young men and women who possess brilliant intellects have often wrung by heart.

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Chapter 16
With Frederick Douglass and Paul Dunbar at the World's Fair.
The year following the critical illness during which I lost my
first baby and came 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 Plaissance with all its oriental
denizens and dancers was something new "under the sun" and many "perfect
ladies" who went there to see them perform came away shocked. Compared with
what one commonly sees on the stage today, however, those exotic ladies
knew nothing but the A.B.C. of sending thrills down the spinal column of
American sight seers by their terpsichorean stunts.
The World's Fair was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of
the discovery of America by Columbus a whole year later than it should
have been, when Chicago was only an overgrown village and was not the
stirring, milling, mammoth metropolis of the West that it is now.

When my friends saw me walking up and down the endless aisles
of the long buildings filled with exhibits from nearly every civilized
country in the world they marvelled at my power of endurance. The men as
well as the women would sometimes stop completely exhausted, while I went
joyfully on my way leaving them to rest. My power of endurance has always
been a great asset. Even if I get tired, I can work an incredibly long
time. There are few young women who can walk further, stick to a job or 
dance longer than I can even to this day.

But there are two recollections of the 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 Dunbar,
just as he was starting on his career as a poet.
     Mr. Douglass was the Commissioner in charge of the exhibit
from Haiti 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 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 building, 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 a little
daughter), because when he (or she) grows up, I want him (or her) to be able

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to say that he (or she) 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 settled ourselves
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 Eiffel
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."
     The great man had become deeply interested in Paul Dunbar, because
his struggle for existance and recognition had been so desperate.
The fact that Mr. Douglass was the first person I had ever heard mention
Paul Dunbar's name is 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 gone to transact the "Sage
of Anacostia" inquired, "Have you 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 he then 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 faltered a bit and his eyes
grew moist. "What a tragedy it is," he said, "that a young man with such
talent as he undoubtedly possesses should be so terribly handicapped as
he is."
     Fate decreed that I should be with both of these renowned
men shortly before they passed away.  I was with Mr. Douglass just a few
hours before he suddenly died at his home.  A little before noon he had
attended a meeting of the National Council of Women.  As soon as one of
the officers spied him entering the door she announced from the platform
that Frederick Douglass was in the house.  A committee was immediately appointed
to escort him to the platform, and when he reached it the audience

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gave him the Chautauqua salute.
When the meeting adjourned and the admiring women had ceased
paying homage to Mr.Douglass, which I had enjoyed at a distance,I came 
forward and greeted him. He and I left what is now called Columbia Theatre
and walked together to the corner. There he stopped and asked me to have
lunch with him. But I was not feeling very well and declined the invitation,
alas. Lifting his large,light sombrero which he frequently wore, he
bade me good bye. About seven o'clock that evening a friend came by our
house to tell us that Frederick Douglass had just died suddenly, while he
was at the table describing to his wife the ovation tendered to him in the
forenoon by the members and officers of the National Council for Women. 
How deeply I regretted then that I had been unable to spend another hour
in the company of that great man whom I should never see again.
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 every time I pass that house. I can see 
Paul Dunbar beckoning to me,as I walked by,when he wanted to read me a
poem that he had just written,or when he wished to discuss a word or a
subject on which he had not fully decided. Paul often came to see me to
read his poems or his prose articles 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 see that?" Then,after he had 
aroused my curiosity sufficiently he would show it to me and say;"Now look
at it quickly. Don't 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. Paul had been critically 
ill for a long time,but when he 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 on her shoulders in addition to the strain,both
mental and physical,of nursing her son whose life had been despaired of
even then,I declined. Almost by return mail Paul wrote again,urging me to
stop with his mother and himself,saying that it would do him so much good
to talk over the good old times. I could not resist that and I went to his
house.
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.

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Some beautiful,young girls once called while I was with Paul to
chat with him a while and pay their respects. When they 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 those beautiful 
girls."
"Sometimes I think I'm just loafing,myself," he laughingly replied.
How well he remembered this was shown a short while after I returned
home,not long before he passed away. 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 feat which during his
last year of illness was often difficult for him to perform,the following
lines;                           "Look hyeah,Molly,
                                    Aint it jolly,
                                    Jes a loafing round?
                                    Tell the Jedge,
                                    Not to hedge,
                                    For I am still in town."

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Chapter 17
The Vicissitudes of my Precious Gold Thimble. 
Although I was happy to get a chance to see the World's Fair,I
was quite unhappy for several weeks after I reached Chicago because of
an incident which some people might consider quite trivial. For the first
time in my life the gold thimble which Mother gave me when I was twelve
years old,was left home by mistake. There is no doubt whatever that it is
possible for some people to have a genuine affection for an inanimate
object,for I dearly loved my little gold thimble. It had been my inseparable
companion for so long. I had carried it with me through High School
and College and had taken it abroad. Whenever I travelled in the United
States or Europe I put it in my purse with my railroad ticket,so determined
was I never to lose it. And now,having preserved it so carefully
through all these years,there I was in Chicago without it.
I wrote to my husband immediately and implored him to search
carefully through our two rooms till he found my thimble. When he did not
reply the second 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 room 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 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
it had come to light.
One day,as he was walking up the street,he met the friend who
had come to help me get ready to go to Chicago the afternoon I started
on my journey and she told him she had taken it home by mistake. I had
lent her my thimble so that she might sew something for me at the last
minute,and without thinking she had kept it on her finger,when she left
the house. It never occurred to her that I would worry about it when I
reached Chicago,so she did not take the trouble to tell my husband about
it. Mr.Terrell declared that as soon as he heard the good news, he fell
upon my friend's neck,and embraced her right then and there,in the street,
so greatly relieved was he to learn where that pestiferous,little article
was. I urged him to send it to Chicago to me,but he refused to comply to
my request. He would put it where he KNEW it wouldn't get lost for a

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while,he said.
My precious little thimble became a great nuisance to my
family,I fear,because I was so wretched when it was misplaced. This usually
happened when I was called away suddenly while sewing with it,and laid 
it down hurriedly and forgot where I had left it. Under such circumstances
I never stopped hunting for it till I had found it.Nothing inanimate that
I have ever possessed was ever dearer to my heart than that thimble and
nothing inanimate that I have ever owned has ever caused me so many uneasy
moments.
Even as a little girl the thought of being separated from my
thimble made me wretched. When I was about 14 years old and attending the
High School at Oberlin I suddenly discovered at the beginning of the
school year in September that it was gone. The lady with whom I boarded
declared that she had not seen it. Her little daughter about 10 and her
husband said ditto.  That settled it. My little thimble was lost, irretrievably,irrevocably 
lost. All through the Fall and Winter I grieved
about it. Scarcely a day passed that I did not speak 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,where
I had probably dropped it and where it had lain all the Winter,till the
snow melted in the Spring.
Once more I was separated from my thimble throughout the
Fall and Winter. A friend,who lived with us shortly after we went to
housekeeping,and I were sewing together one afternoon. I did not enjoy
sewing,but I learned to do it quite well,because it saved money,and it
was necessary for me to cut down our expenses as much as I could. 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 a
young woman come in to help me and sometimes I had to tread the wine
press alone. My mother was a large woman and it was not easy for an
amateur like myself to make dresses for her.
But,to return to the thimble. I remembered distinctly that I 
had set it on the sideboard in the dining room,when I stopped sewing. But,
when I went to look for it,it was gone. My husband,my friend and a girl
who was helping me with the work,so that she might earn enough to go to
school,knew nothing whatever about it. Nobody in the house had seen it
and there was nobody I could possibly suspect. I searched for it every

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where.  I moved everything movable and looked behind every piece of furniture 
in the house.  I went through every box and drawer from the first
floor to the third of that seven room English basement, peering into
drawers and boxes which had not been opened for months.  But the thimble
could not be found.  After having succeeded in keeping it for nearly
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 Mother had given it to me when I was a
little girl and I had preserved it so long.  But, unlike Banquo's ghost it
wouldn't be downed.
     One day, after the winter had passed and the warm days of Spring
had arrived, 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 long, lost thimble.  It had been
quietly reposing there for six months.  My friend surmised that as she
stood by the sideboard the afternoon we sewed together, she must have been
toying with the thimble, while she was talking to me, 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 which she wore 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 have 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 been working for people who believe that
all colored people steal.
     Many a colored man and many a colored woman, no more guilty than
was that girl in my home, when my gold thimble mysteriously disappeared,
have been convicted and sentenced to the penetentiary for years.  Several
forceful illustrations of the wrong which may be done innocent people by
depending solely on circumstantial evidence have come under my own personal 
observation, but none was more striking than the one which might have
been done in my own home.
     Up to date my little thimble and I have weathered the storms of 
fifty years together.  Sometimes we have been very happy and then again we

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have been very sad, when we were all alone.  I do not use it now as much as 
I formerly did, but I always know exactly where it is.  When I shuffle off
this mortal coil I shall request my loved ones whom I leave behind to put
my little thimble into the casket with me, so that we may be together till
the end of time.

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Chapter18
Buying a Home under Difficulties
     For several years after our marriage we lived in a two-room 
apartment in a desirable section of the National Capital
and then decided we would start to buy a home.  But, deciding to
do so was much easier than carrying out our plans.  Washington,
D.C. is like most cities in our country.  Colored people have
to overcome many difficulties, when they try to buy homes.  How
huge they are I did not know until I tackled them myself.  It
was easy to find houses where self-respecting people of any color
would not care to live.  But finding the kind we wanted which
either the owners themselves or their agents would sell us was a 
horse of quite another color.
     We looked with longing eyes upon many a dear, little home
which was just exactly what we liked in every respect, but we
were brutally told we could not buy it, because we were colored.
Finally, I selected one, only one house removed from a section
known as Howard Town.  It was named for General O.O. Howard under
whose supervision a camp for refugees was established there during
the Civil War.  The little house was an English basement with six
rooms, a hall room and a bath.  It was several blocks from Howard
University, one of the finest insitutions for colored youth in the
United States.  General Howard was deeply interested in the education 
of colored people and was the leading spirit in founding the
university over which he presided for four years.
     Although the house was very near a settlement occupied exclusively 
by colored people, it was located in Le Droit Park, a section 
in which nobody but white people lived excepting one colored
family.  It is said that the white people used to build a fence
to separate their bailiwick from Howard Town, so their colored
neighbors could not walk through Le Droit Park on their way to the
city.  Every night this fence was kicked down by colored people,
according to the story related me by Major Fleetwood, a colored
man who was awarded a medal by Congress for distinguished bravery
during the Civil War.  And every day it was rebuilt by the whites,
who were determined to keep colored people out.



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     Be that as it may, when the woman who owned the house which
we had selected learned that colored people wanted it, she refused 
to sell it to us.  Since it was so near a settlement of 
colored people, I had no idea there would be the slightest objection 
to [selling it to us] letting us buy it.  I had been searching continuously
and diligently for several months and this was the only [desirable]
house which I had seen which I thought I would like and would be able to buy to buy.
     It reached the ears of an old, well-established real estate
firm that we wanted this piece of property.  Both Father and son
came to see us one evening.  After I had given a detailed account
of the prolonged, strenuous efforts I had made to find a house,
the elder of the two men said:  "Do you want that house in Le
Droit Park?"  I answered him that I wanted it very much.  "Well, you
shall have it. he declared, "I'll be damned, if you shant."
     He fulfilled his promise to get it for me to the letter.  He
induced a wealthy man who had a colored secretary (which was indeed 
a rare thing in Washington) to buy the house for us and then
he sold it to us immediately.
     It was in this house soon after we lost our second baby at
birth that University Park Temple was organized.  For several years
afterward the services of this church were held in a little mission 
near Howard University which had been conducted by the First
Congregational Church of which President and Mrs. Coolidge were
members during their residence in the White House.  Then this
church founded in our home merged with the Lincoln Memorial
Congregational Church and the union of the two is now known as
Lincoln Memorial Congregational Temple which has recently built a
magnificent structure.
     From the English basment we moved into another house in Le
Droit Park which my father gave us.  Here we remained fifteen
years.
     When I started to furnish the first home we bought I discovered 
that our exchequer was a bit low and economy must be used.
Then I acquired the habit of going to a well-known auction place

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and discovered that I could find furniture there which I could
not afford to pay for new but which I could buy at a reasonable
price second hand.  I took great pride in some of the bargains
I got in this auction room in the early days.
     Mother died in the second house into which we moved.  After
that so many things reminded me of her I decided it was my duty
to myself to make a change.  She lived with me continuously for
13 years.  It was the first time I had been with my mother longer 
than a few months at a time, since I was a very small child.
In reviewing the period she spent with me, after she had passed
away, it seemed to me that each of us had tried to make up for
lost time by concentrationg into those 13 years all of the devotion 
we could have shown each other during the time we had
been separated.  She was a great comfort and in spite of her
physical affliction she was an unalloyed joy to us all.  Mr.
Terrell and she always combined against me in an argument.
Mr. Terrell used to assure his friends that they did not know
what real life was until they had lived with their mother-in-law.
     When I started in quest for a house for the second time and
asked several real estate firms to show me what they had on their
list, I discovered they took me to see nothing but residences
which had been discarded by discrimination people, because they
were old-fashioned and devoid of modern improvments.  Then it
dawned upon me that,  as a colored woman, I would be unable even
to SEE the kind of house I desired.
     Taking the elder of my two daughters with me I went to a
hotel, remained there a few days, callup up some real estate men
and told them I was in Washington for the purpose of buying a 
residence, stated the price I could pay and requested them to
show me what they had to offer.  I wondered what would happen
if somebody well acquainted with me should meet us, as we made
this tour.  I smiled when I pictured the look of disgust and
anger which would spread over the agent's face, when he saw me

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greeting one of my friends.
     But this did not happen, so the agent's temper was not
ruffled.  I felt then as I feel now, that people who are discriminated 
against solely on account of race, color or creed
are justified in resorting to any subterfuge, using any disguise
or playing any trick, provided they do not actually break the
law, if it will enable them to secure the advantages and obtain
the rights to which they are entitled by outwitting their 
prejudice-ridden foes.
     As I motored through a street with a real estate agent, I 
saw a For Sale sign on a house which he did not show me, but
which, judging from the exterior, I thought I would like.  My
daughter and I went to see it next day and the caretaker who
was showing it was eager to have me take it.  It was new and the
man told me that the purchaser would be allowed to paper it and
select the electric fixtures to suit his taste.  Then I went
to a real estate agent who had been highly recommended to me
by a friend.  "He sold me my house in this fine neighborhood,"
she said, "and I believe he would sell a house to a devil, if the
devil could pay for it and behaved himself."
     Feeling that I might be included in such a lenient, broad
category as that, I wended my way to this reputedly tolerant
gentleman, and threw my cards on the table at once.  I asked him
frankly whether he would object to selling a house to colored
people in the neighborhood designated.  I would not bother him
further, I stated, if he had any scruples whatever on the subject.
Referring to the record in the city which my husband and I had
made, the realestate agent declared that "anybody would be glad
to live next to Judge Terrell and his wife."
     It was a reflection upon my intelligence and my knowledge
of conditions on general principles for the gentleman to deliver
himself of any such speech as that and expect me to believe it.
If our dear Lord and Saviour should come to the United States

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in the form of a colored man, he would be obliged to say again,
"the Son of man hath not where to lay his head," unless he was 
accommodated by colored people or was willing to take anything
he could get.
     There are exceptions to all rules and there is no doubt that 
there is a goodly number who would give shelter to a colored man
or woman over night, just as Robert G. Ingersoll opened his
house to Frederick Douglass in Peoria, Illinois, when he had been
refused accommodation at all the hotels.
     The agent appeared perfectly willing to negotiate the purchase 
of the house and I commissioned him to do it.  I gave him
the required deposit and urged him to close the deal as soon as
he could.  He promised to let me hear from him in a short while.
I grew apprehensive about getting the house, but my daughter
who had heard the agent give me positive assurance that there
would be no trouble about buying it for me would read me delightful 
little lectures about worrying unnecessarily.  "You just like
to borrow trouble, Mother", she would say, "And you dearly love
to worry.  Mr. L. said he would get that house for you, and of
course he will keep his word."  My dear little girl was filled
with the faith of youth, because she had had no experience battling 
with the race problem, as her mother had had.
     So much confidence did she repose in the agent's promise
that she planned a house party for the Christmas holidays and
assigned each of the prospective guests to their respective rooms
Not only did she complete all her plans for the house warming,
but she wrote her name with the new house address upon newspaper,
paper bags and upon anything else she dared inscribe that she
happened to come upon, when she had a lead pencil in her hand.
     Several times I phoned the agent urging him to complete
the transaction as soon as he could, so that we might move into
our new home before the opening of the fall term which was not
far away.  He would tell me I would have to wait a little longer 
and that everything was  going all right.  Finally, I went to his

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office just before school opened to get a definite reply.  He
then returned my deposit and frankly admitted that he could not
sell us the house, because the owner had discovered that a colored 
family wanted it and refused to let us have it.  It is
quite probable that after having promised to negotiate the purchase 
of the property, the agent's pedal extremities suddenly
grew cold, and he changed his mind.  When I realized that my hopes
of getting a desirable home for my family has been blasted, my
emotions became so turbulent, I did not trust myself to say a
word.  I feared I could not maintain my self control, if I 
attempted to talk.
     "It is well for you," said the agent returning my deposit,
"that you did not succeed in getting that house.  If you had,
you would have been boycotted by everybody upon whom you had to
depend for supplies.  Neither the milkman nor the iceman would
have served you.  And every time you or the other members of your
family appeared on the street, the boys in the neighborhood
would have pelted you with bricks and stones."
     "Such a fearsome prospect at that would not have frightened
me a bit," I replied, "if I could have gained possession of that
house.  There is always a cure for violence like that due to race
prejudice, if one goes about it in the right way."
     After that dismal failure I decided that never again would 
I attempt to buy a house in Washington, D.C.  To that decision
I adhered a long time and we lived in a rented house.  But the
times change and we all change with them.  Circumstances seemed
to demand that we should get a home of our own after a while, and
I started on a wild goose chase of house hunting again.
     We had no car at that time, so I trudged many weary miles,
before I finally found a residence which appealed to all our family 
as desirable.  I had decided definitely not to buy a house
that had a kitchen in the basement.  I had had enough of that
arrangement in our second house to last me for the rest of my

-129-
natural life.  No more basements for me, running up and the
steps to answer the door bell when I busy in the kitchen
and there was no one to help me!
     The house which I finally selected had the kitchen on the
first floor and many other features pleased us.  The front room
on the second floor was bright with sunshine the greater part of
the day.  A colored real estate agent had shown us this house
and he assured me he could get it for me.  There was absolutely 
no doubt about it, he said, so I gave him the deposit.  After
he had kept it for several months and had been unable to complete 
the deal, the deposit was returned.  He had failed.  But
I could not bear to give the house up.  It had taken me a long
time to find it and the thought of being obliged to go through
another ordeal of house-hunting was nerve racking, to say the
least.
     I phoned the real estate agent who had it for sale and
urged him to sell it to us.  Without mincing matters at all
he told me right off that reel that he would not sell that
house to colored people, no matter who or what they were.
"But a colored family lives next door to the house I want to
buy," I said, "and there are several others on the same side
of the street."  "But they do not own their homes," he replied, 
"they only rent them."  This statement did not tally
with the facts.  I knew one of the teachers in the colored
High School who lived four or five doors from the coveted
house had bought his home.  I was at my wits end.  There
seemed nothing more that I could do.  Wherever I turned, 
disappointment stared me in the face.
     As the last resort I called up a colored man who was in
the District Tax Office whom I had known from girlhood and 
asked him to ascertain the name of the owner of the house
which I wanted so much to buy.  I also related my tale of
woe.  He promised he would help me get the house, if he
possibly could.

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     A few days afterward an agent came to see me to inquire
whether I would like to purchase the house in question, and
to assure me he could make arrangements to get it for me, if
I did.  He kept his word.  Even though I had to pay several
thousand dollars more for it than the price at which it was
originally offered, and was obliged to make a much larger deposit 
than the one which was at first required, I was glad to 
be relieved of all the worry and trouble incident to hunting
another house, and I cheerfully accepted the terms.
     And so, after many troubles and trials we finally obtained
possession of the house which we now call home, and which, by
the way, is on that same street on which both President Wilson
and President Hoover once lived.
     It is not because colored people are so wild to live
among white people that they try to buy property in a white
neighborhood.  They do so, because the houses there are modern,
as a rule, and are better in every way than are those which
have been discarded and turned over to their own group.  If
colored people could find houses on a street restricted to
themselves which were as up to date and as well built as are
those in white districts, they would make no effort to thrust
themselves upon their fair-skinned brothers and sisters who
object to having them in close proximity.
     When we were obliged to pay several thousand dollars
more for our house than the price which was first quoted, we
were not being subjected to a hardship from which other colored 
people are generally exempt.  It is well known from $8 to
$10 more rent per month is demanded from colored people than
white people have to pay for the same kind of house.  As a 
rule, they also have to pay much more for the property they
buy than do others.  African blood is truly a luxury in the
United States for which those who show it or acknowledge it
pay dearly indeed.

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     Shortly after we went to housekeeping in our little English 
Basement Major Charles Douglass, the son of Frederick
Douglass, invited us to Highland Beach, which is about five
miles from the Naval Academy in Ananpolis, Maryland, to look at
a tract of land he had bought on the Chesapeake Bay.  He intended 
to convert it into a summer resort for our group, he
said, and he wanted us to buy a lot.  It was in the country and
no human being ever disliked the country more than my husband.
He had remained in the country till he was ten years old he used
to say, and he had got enough of it during that period to last
him for the rest of his natural life.
     I was delighted with the place and decided to use the money 
I had earned by substituting in the High School during
Miss Patterson's illness to buy the lot.  The Honorable Frederick
Douglass selected a corner lot, facing Chesapeake Bay, and asked 
us to take the one next to his.  Our neighbor on the left,
therefore, was Mr. Douglass and on the right a short distance
away Paul Dunbar bought a lot. Never have I seen a finer combination 
of the country and the sea shore than Highland Beach
affords.  A sprint down the front steps, a bound across the read
in front of our house and then across a stretch of sandy beach
and presto! we are in the Bay.  This summer home has been a great
blessing. I attribute much of the good health which my daughters
and I enjoy to the swimming and out door life we have been able
to lead down there.  What was a settlement of only a few houses
not many years ago has developed into quite a summer resort
which literally fills a long felt want for colored people in 
and near the National Capital who are excluded from others.

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Chapter 19
Learning to Cook and Entertaining Guests.
     When I started housekeeping, my father said I did not know
how to boil water.  I had been sent away to school when I was 
six years old and was considered a visitor when I spent the summer
vacation at home.  I had never learned to cook, because
whenever I went into the kitchen, the presiding genius of that
sanctuary would run me out.  She didn't want to bother with me.
      While I was in college I made up my mind I would do nothing
which would reflect upon college-bred women.  At that time comparitively 
few women even of the dominant race had received the
degree of A.B. and only two colored women before our Commencement.
College bred women had a bad reputation for neatness either as
to personal appearance or in the home.  Words simply failed the
public when it talked about them as housekeepers!  It was enough
to make angels weep to behold the awful homes kept by women with
college degrees, people declared.  The commedians always represented 
them on the stage as wearing bad-looking, unbecoming hats.
long dresses with the hem ripped half out, and shoes run down at
the heel.
     And as for cooking!  Of course college-bred women knew nothing 
whatever about that.  Women who had studied the higher mathematics, 
the sciences and Greek had so violated the laws of nature
that it was never possible for them to learn afterwards to do well
the work which the Creator had ordained they should do.
     So far as I myself was concerned, I resolved that I would 
prove all those charges against college-bred women were false.  In
the first place, I would dress as well as I could.  I would not
wear shoes run down at the heel.  I would not walk around the
streets with a portion of the hem of my skirt ripped and I would
try to select becoming hats.  All this I promised myself solemnly
to do.
     Then, too, I would learn to cook.  I would be a good cook
and put to shame women who had not graduated from college, just
to prove that the foul aspersions cast upon their sisters who had,

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were not justified by the facts.
     We had been in our new home to start housekeeping for the
first time about two weeks when Thanksgiving rolled around.
That surely was a time to make a big reputation as a cook, I
thought.  I would set such a dinner before my husband as no
experienced cook could surpass.  I was full of enthusiasm and
started to prepare the turkey right after breakfast.
     The bird was lying on one side of the kitchen and the cook
book on which I had to depend for success lay open on the other
side.  I feared I might soil it if it were in too close proximity 
to the turkey and I wanted to keep the precious volume clean.
In making the dressing when the recipe called for a teaspoonful
of salt, I would painstakingly measure that, put it into a bowl
near the turkey and return to the cook book on the other side of 
the kitchen to see what else was needed.  I did not trust myself 
to gather two ingredients at a time, so eager was I to get
everything exactly right.
     After the turkey was ready to put into the overn I started
to make the Queen of All Puddings, the recipe for which was 
found in a little paper-back book given away by the Crisco Company 
which was just beginning to distribute its product.  By 
the time I had corralled all the ingredients for the turkey and 
the pudding I am sure I had walked at teast ten miles.  I 
have always regretted that I did not have a speedometer that day,
so as to prove that I walked that distance.
     In the afternoon my husband attended the football game and
returned about six expecting to find dinner ready.  He was disappointed.  
The oven was refractory and did not seem to want to
bake the things.  Mr. Terrell went off and returned later, but
still the Queen of All Puddings was not yet done.  I tried to 
keep up appearance and look unconcerned, but my morale was completely 
destroyed.  Finally about nine o'clock two of our friends, -
a husband and wife - called to see us.  Although it was very humilisting 
to me,  I related my tale of woe -- none of my dishes I

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tried to cook in the oven was done.  The good woman said she
would look at the stove and see what was the matter.  Then she
discovered that the section under the stove was just as full of
ashes as it could possibly be.  Nothing in the world could cook
in that oven, she declared.  And, as if that were not bad enough,
I had turned the damper the wrong way.  It was cooling the oven
off all the time instead of heating it.  About ten o'clock
Thanksgiving night we sat down  to dinner.  A more wretched tired,
disgusted woman than I could not have been found in the United 
States.  I just did manage to restrain the tears and that was
all.  I certainly could not have been described as "cheerful"
at that meal.  My husband enjoyed joking about my mistakes in 
cooking and for a long time he talked about that wonderful
Thanksgiving dinner which it took me twelve hours to cook and
he frequently referred to me as "The Queen of All Puddings" for
years.
     Both my mother and father were very hospitable and I
inherited that trait from them.  But I dreaded having company
for dinner like a toothache, because something was always sure
to go wrong, no matter how hard I tried to have everything right.
Once I invited four young men to dinner, a few years after we
had gone to housekeeping.  Two of them were 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 though
I had succeeded.
      I had made some delicious ice cream myself.  My father said
I excelled in that.  But I observed that the young men simply
tasted it and let it go at that.  I did not care for ice cream,
so the young woman who was serving did not bring me any.  Chagrined 
that my guests did not eat their dessert I went into the 
kitchen after dinner to ascertain the reason.  It did not take
me long to do this.  The minute I tasted it I discovered it was

135
full of coal oil. The young woman who had frozen the cream confessed that she had poured coal oil into the holes placed in top of the freezer cover to lubricate it. She had done this, she said, because she thought the job would be easier for her, but had no idea that the coal oil would get int the ice cream. 
      When I invited Samuel Coleridge Taylor, the great composer, to a home 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 as much for their services as they do now. I am glad they are getting a living wage, even if I can not afford such a luxury. This particular cook was an expert at making oyster soup, so I thought it was unneccessary to give her any directions or to hold any conference with her on the subject. I would scarely have dared to be so presumptious. But, when that soup 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 exactly what happened. She thought she had made a mistake about putting in the salt, she said. She had never failed before and she never failed afterwards. But she certainly embarrassed me  when she placed that curdled oyster soup before the distinguished English composer.
      Mr. Terrell invited a friend to dinner once and said he would send home some nice 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 was obliged to be away from home and returned just in time for dinner. When the chops were brought into the dinning 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 

136
 now President of Bethune Cookman College in Daytona, Florida, came to Washington and I invited her to stop with me. Assisting me 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 everything pass off well, while Mrs. Bethune was my guest, because she had treated me so handsomely when I was with her in Florida. My dearly-beloved Eula promised me she would do her level best. I bought a chicken from a dealer who assured me that it was as tender as a broiler. It did not exactly look the part and when I applied certain tests, I had my doubts. But the man assured me it was all right. However, I wrote a note to 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, so that she would not be bothered with making any dessert, when she came home from school.
      When Mrs. Bethune and I sat down to dinner, the chicken was so tough we could not eat any part of it. Eula had not parboiled it, as I had advised her to do. Naturally, I expected her to have ice cream but Eula brought us something, the like of which I had never seen before and have never beheld on the face of the globe since. She had decided to make tapioca pudding in which she was an expert, because she added some sort of a demi-semi quaver to it which made it particularly good. But the concoction which she sat before us looked like a piece of brown parchment and it tasted like it, too. My guest and I could not eat that either. Eula afterword 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

137

usually did and had thus spoiled 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 housekeeping 
times. I realized that I was seriously handicapped because 
I had to teach myself to cook and had never been in a kitchen 
with a women who was efficient and willing to show me just 
how certain things should be done. I followed the cook book 
slavishly and did not dare to add to or subtract anything from 
a recipe, as some of my friends who had enjoyed such training 
either in their own homes or in somebody's kitchen were 
able to do. 

I balked at nothing which had to be done in the home. 
With the little assistance I received occasionally from the 
children and my helper I gave each of the four rooms originally 
finished in oak four coats of ivory paint. When anything 
needed a coat of 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 show wear and needed recovering. 
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. 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 and chairs when 
they sagged and could do odd jobs in carpentering fairly well.
In relating the vicissitudes of my precious gold thimble I referred 
to the sewing which I did for my mother, my two girls 
and myself. I liked to can and preserve fruit and put up large 
quantities every fall for many years. 

My mother was very proud of my work and was boasting of
my skill in doing various housekeeping stunts to Mr. Lewis 
Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass, whom she met on the street 

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car one day. But the manner in which Mr. Douglass received 
this information took Mother back considerably. In stead 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 to the work for 
which I had been trained and which I seemed to enjoy. 

Public work of various kinds was my forte, he believed.
There were comparatively few colored women at that time who 
could discharge those 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 impressed with Mr. Douglass' advice, 
for she had often expressed an opinion similar to his herself. 
But the duties which pressed in my home had to be done and 
often there was nobody to do them but myself. Even though I 
had a helper in the kitchen for a long time after we went to 
housekeeping, 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 had 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    

  
 
 
  

 

-139- 

not help wishing that much of the time spent in cooking, dish-
washing, 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 it was possible for me to render even the small 
service which I have been able to give in behalf of my group.   

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Chapter 20 

The Commissioners of the National Capital Appoint Me a Member 
of the School Board. 

Shortly before my third baby was born and lost I had received 
a great honor. Congress had empowered the Commissioners 
of the District of Columbia to appoint three women to serve on the 
Board of Education. Since Colored people at that time comprised  
one third of the population of the District of Columbia, many 
felt that a colored woman, should be appointed. But it was 
currently rumored that even if white men could be found who 
would be willing to work with a colored woman, it would be hard, 
if not altogether impossible, to find white women who would 
agree to do so. 

Dr. C. B. Purvis, son of the well-known abolitionist who
lived for years in Philadelphia, suggested to Mr. Terrell that  
I be a candidate, because, he said, I was well qualified by 
education and training to represent the colored people of the 
District. But, as I was then expecting to become a mother, 
the idea did not appeal to me at all. However, I thought it 
was my duty to cast about for a colored woman who would be a 
worthy representative and then suggest her to the authorities. 
Therefore, I went to see commissioner Ross who had charge of 
the educational affairs of the District, to recommend a woman 
who I believed would fill this important position admirably. 

I began saying, "Commissioner Ross, I have come here to 
implore you not to appoint a colored woman who will not worthily 
represent the colored people of this city. Without intending 
to do so white people who have the power of placing colored 
people in positions of responsibility, honor and trust often
appoint individuals who misrepresent their race instead of 
representing it well, because they are not well enough acquainted
with colored people to know whom to select. Please don't 
make that mistake in this case". And then I proceeded to 
name my candidate for the position and present her qualifications 

When I had finished, Commissioner Ross began to ask me questions 
 
   




-141-
questions about myself.  Where had I been educated?  He was interested 
to know I had studied abroad several years and asked my opinion 
about four or five matters affecting the public schools.
"Have you any letters from your former teachers at Oberlin?"
he inquired.  "I wish you would let me have them immediately,"
he said.  "I want to show them to the other two commissioners
who will meet with me this afternoon.  Can you bring them to me
by two o'clock?"  I was not at all sure I could find those letters
and it was then nearly noon.  However, I promised Comissioner
Ross I would search for them carefully and would bring them to
him if I succeeded in finding them.  I found them and when I
brought them to his room, his secretary told me that the Commissioner 
had instructed him to tell me to wait a few minutes if I
came.  In a few minutes, Mr. Ross called me into the conference
room and presented me to his colleagues.
     When Mr. Terrell came hoe to dinner that night, I told him
what I had said to Commissioner Ross about the mistakes which
white people simetimes make in appointing colored people to
responsible politions.  My husband was greatly amused at this
frank statement and laughingly replied:  "Well, its a good thing
you yourself are not a candidate for the position, for, after
expressing such an opinion to a man in authority, you wouldn't 
have a ghost of a chance to get it."
     Shortly after midnight our door bell rang and a reporter
was ushered in, bringing the news that I had been appointed a
member of the Board of Education that afternoon and asking for
a sketch of my life as well as my photo.  All the direful predictions 
made by Doubting Thomas that white women would not
work on a Board of Education with a colored woman were false.
There was no friction whatever between us on account of race.
Nobody partronized me on account of my color and nobody seemed to object to any opinion I
expressed, because it came from a colored woman.
It happened that I was the only member of the Board, white or
colored, who had ever taught in the public schools of the 
District of Columbia.  For that reason I was often requested to 

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describe conditions which obtained and to answer questions
which were asked.
     It finally occurred to me, however, that reference was too
often made to the fact that I was more thoroughly acquainted
with conditions in the school than the other members of the
Board.  It began to embarrass me considerably.  One day after
there had been a lengthy discussion in the Board meeting about
something affecting the teachers and I had been asked as a 
former teacher to express an opinion I requested General Harries,
president of the Board, to let me speak to him a few minutes after  the meeting.
     "I would rather not be asked so often to express an opinion,
because I have been a teacher in the schools," I said, "If you
think there is any information I can give you, because I have 
taught here, I'll be glad to let you have it either before or
after the meeting, but please dont ask me to do so during the
session".  I decided to take this stand, because I have often
observed that no matter how broad and liberal white people may
be, as a rule, they do not like to have it appear that colored
people know more about anything in the world than they do.
     As a "trustee" (for the people appointed on the Board then
were called "Trustees") I tried to protect the interest of the 
children, the teachers and the parents of the particular group
I was designated to represent.
     I had scarcely been appointed  before people came running
to my house to tell me about the short comings and evil deeds of
some of the teachers.  I was amazed to learn how eager some
people are to cause others to lose their positions.  Both men
and women would come to my house to tell me some scandal about
a teacher, generally a woman, and urge me to have her removed.
I did not know how to handle such a situation at first.  In some
instances I was well acquainted with the teacher whose name was 
besmirched and did not believe a word that I heard.  I could not

143
help feeling that the people who came to relate the various
scandals they brought did so because they thought a woman
would lend a willing ear to it.
     I wanted to impress upon those who came bringing evil reports 
that my own standards were high, and that personally I
wanted nobody in the schools whose standards are low.  But I
also wanted to impress upon them that I would never make a 
move against any teacher soley on hear-say evidence.
     A very  bad case was reported to me and I was urged to
have the teacher removed immediately.  I explained that I could
not do that single-handed and alone, even if I wished to.  But
my informant was not satisfied with that statement.  She hinted
very broadly that my own standards were not so high as they
should be, if I didnot take drasctic action upon the facts
she had presented right away.
     "Will you be kind enough to tell a small committee what
you have just related to me?" I inquired.  "No indeed," she 
replied.  "I will tell nobody but you."  "Only two members of
the Board will be present besides myself," I argued, "and they
will not divulge what you relate."  But my visitor would not
consent to tell anybody but myself what she had narrated to me.
     Then I arose, got paper and pencil, and began to write.
"What are you doing?" inquired my visitor a bit concerned.
"Simply jotting down the facts you have presented to me, for
fear I may forget some of the details," I replied.  When I 
had finished taking a few notes I said "I will notify the proper 
authorities concerning this matter and let them take
suitable action."  But, before I could go further she interrupted 
me.  "You will not divulge to anybody who gave you this
information," she said, greatly agitated.  "You must not mention my name."
     "Are you not willing to do this much to promote the wel-
fare of the schools?" I asked.  "No, indeed, I am not," she
replied forcibly.  "I do not want my name dragged into this

-144-
affair in any way, shape or form."  "Do you expect me," I asked 
"to have this or any other teacher dismissed on hear-say
evidence brought to me by a woman who isn't willing to let me
tell the proper authorities from whom I received this information
upon which I am asked to prefer these grave charges?  It is a 
very serious thing to cause a woman to lose her position in the
public schools on account of improper or immoral conduct.  I 
would not be justified in trying to remove a teacher on the unsupported 
testimony of one woman."
     My visitor arose to leave immediately, insisting that under 
no circumstances would she allow her name to be used.  But
even so it was clearly my duty to put the teacher out of the 
schools.  I tried to make her see that her interest in the
schools was not so genuine and great as she had represented it
to be, if she were not willing to assist in having removed
from them a teacher whom she had depicted as being altogether
bad.  But I doubt that I succeeded.
     After this experience I knew exactly how to handle each
similar case.  I always had paper and pencil ready, and as soon
as I was award that somebody had come to tell me about the misdeeds 
of a teacher, I began to take copious notes.  As a rule,
the informer would ask immediately why and what I was writing.
When I informed him or her that I would use the notes in presenting 
the facts to the proper authorities, invariably the
visitor would become greatly agitated and declare excitedly
that his or her name could not be mentioned under any circumstances 
to anybody connected with the Board or to any other
human being.  There were very few exceptions to this rule.  I
learned that when I discussed my experiences in this directlion
with other members of the Board.
     After a lapse of years it is a great comfort to me to reflect 
that with three exceptions I never cast a vote to remove
a colored teacher from the public schools.  I would have been
derelict in my duty and recreant to my trust if I had not pursued 
the course I did with reference to the cases mentioned.

-145-
     I never regretted casting a ballot more than I did once
when duty compelled me to vote to remove an officer whom I had
known from his youth and admired very much.  I was in the office
of the Superintendent one day and he showed me two letters,.
Without letting me see the signature of either he asked me
whether I thought they had been written by two people or both
had been written by the same person.  I did not have the remotest 
idea why he asked the question.  I examined the letters
and I was convinced that both the letters were written by the
same hand.  I called the Superintendent's attention to the
peculiarity of several letters which were identical in both
epistles.  After I had definitely committed myself to this
opinion the Superintendent told me that one of the letters
was written by a colored official and the other was sent anonymously.  
Consequently, when this official was tried, however,
much I regretted doing so, I was obliged to vote with the
majority of the Board that he had been guilty of the offense
with which he was charged.  In spite of the fact that I believed 
in the guilt of the officer and had definitely placed
myself on record as doing so, some in my own racial group criticized 
me sharply for voting to remove him for this offence.
     Over and over again I fought desperately to save a teacher 
against whom charges had been preferred, if I believed he
or she were innocent.  More than one teacher holding an important 
position in the schools of the National Capital today can
testify to the success of my efforts when I took up the cudgel
in his or her defense.  One of my friends complimented me once
by saying "The only hard fights you have ever made as a member 
of the Board of Education was to keep a teacher in the
system and not to put one out."
     While I was on the School Board several times I stood
alone in casting my vote to decide some mooted point.  Perhaps 
the most conspicuous case was the one in which it was decided

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to remove from the white schools a beautiful little girl whose
mother was white and whose father was practically white also with
about a teaspoonful of African blook in his veins.
     The little girl's parents lived in one of the suburbs of Washington 
where the child, who was about nine years old, had always attended 
the public school for white children.  Some on in that suburb had
discovered that her father was supposed to have a few drops of African 
blook in his veins and reported the matter to the school officials.
Then the "leading citizens" of that suburb had insisted that the child
be forced to attend the public school for colored children.
     While the matter was being discussed by the Board of Educatinon, 
the little girl was brought to a meeting one afternoon, so that the
members might see her.  And a truly lovely picture they saw!  The child
had long, golden curls, blue eyes, was as fair as a lily and as beautiful 
as an angel.  One seldom sees such a vision of loveliness as that
child presented.
     Those who wanted to exclude her from the white schools argued that
the fact her father was known to have even the slightest infusion of
African blood was sufficient reason for taking this step.  I contended
that during slavery it was customary in some southern states for the
child to follow the condition of its mother and, since this child's
mother was white, she should be allowed to attend the white schools and
not be forced to go to the colored schools against the wishes of her
parents.
    Both the white and the colored members of the Board declared that I
was reflecting upon the colored schools, when I pleaded to have the child
remain in the school for white children.  But I insisted that the comparitive 
merit of the two schools was not in-volved at all.  In a city
where there are separate schools, as there are in Washington, D.C.,
if a white woman wants her child to attend a white school, she has
a right to insist upon that privilege.  Years before this occurred
the children of a white woman and a well known colored man who was
a leading physician

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had actually attended the white schools here without any question, 
trouble or friction whatsoever.
     I was eager to have the little girl admitted to the
white schools, because I knew in a prejudice-ridden city she
would have many more advantages, if she were classified as
white than she could enjoy if she were classified as colored,
and that she would be spared many of the hardships, humiliations 
and injustices of which she would be the helpless
victim, if she were forced to cast her lot among colored children.  
But my plea in the little girl's behalf was all in
vain.  Every member of the Board of Education in the National 
Capital, including two colored men, voted to exclude the
child from the white schools except myself.
     A few years after this was done, my door bell rang one
day and a white woman was admitted to my home.  As soon as
she saw me, she  told me she was the mother of the little
girl for whom I had put up such a game fight.  She had come
to say that they had left the suburb in which they formerly
lived, had moved to another section of Washington and her
daughter was attending the white school near her home und
an assumed name.  And later on that little girl was one of
best actresses on the American stage till she passed away
a few years ago.
     Although there were many people in Washington who believed 
it was possible to bribe members of the Board to secure
desirable positions in the public schools, this opinion was
not founded in fact, so far as I was able to ascertain.  I
myself served on the Board for eleven years and yet, during
all that time only once did anybody even attempt to bribe me.
An acquaintance offered to give me $50, if I would appoint
as janitor of one of the buildings a man in whom he was interested.  
This man had been highly recommended to me and
I had decided to give him the job.  But, after his over zealous 
friend had offered to pay me for giving it to him, I 
appointed another.

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     Rather an amusing incident occured once, when I decided 
to do everything in my power to have a director of music
for the colored public schools.  After discussing the matter
with the colored superintendent, I learned that there was
no salary available for that position.  When I presented
the matter to the Board, all the members agreed that such a
position was needed in the colored schools and promised to
vote to create it.  But where was the salary to be found?
That was indeed the question!
     I was informed there was a salary for a teacher in the
sixth grade which might be used for the position.  A teacher
in the fifth grade was about to be promoted to the sixth
and that salary would have to go to her, unless she agreed
to teach the rest of the year on the stipend she was then
receiving in the 5th grade.  When I explained the dilemma
to the teacher, she readily consented to the arrangement and
[and] thus was the position of Director of Music for the colored 
schools created.
     But shortly after that a certain man about town, who was
a "conscientious objector" to almost everything proposed by
the school officials, threatened to sue me for using the money 
designated for a teacher of the 6th grade as a salary
for the Director of Musc in the colored schools.  But, when
he discovered that there was nothing illegal about the transaction, 
he let the suit against me drop.  [*P omitted 151*]
     After Frederick Douglass died it occurred to me that a
day should be set apart in the colored schools in his honor.
In my opinion by all odds Frederick Douglass is the greatest
man whom this country has ever produced.  If it were customary 
to judge human beings by points, I am sure it could be
proved mathematically that Mr. Douglass possessed more points
mentally, morally and spiritually which are necessary to
make a great man than any other man born in the United States,
if not in the whole world.  In reading history I can not recall

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call a man who was born into such depths of poverty and degradation, 
who was reared in such a quagmire of handicaps and 
who largely by his own efforts was able to rise to such 
lofty heights, as Frederick Douglass did.

In referring to the resolution which I introduced at the 
meeting of the Board in its issue of February 1897, the Washington 
correspondent of the New York Age comments as follows: 
"About a month ago Mrs. Mary Church Terrell conceived the 
idea that the colored children of this community ought to celebrate 
in a fitting manner the day on which Frederick Douglass 
was born. In her capacity as a member of the Board of Education 
she introduced a resolution to this effect at its regular 
meeting, which resolution was unanimously adopted. Through 
her efforts, therefore, and by virtue of her foresight, the 1
4th of February will hereafter be known in our school system 
as "Douglass Day". On this day songs of freedom will be sung, 
essays will be read, declamations given by the pupils and 
orations delivered by distinguished men and women touching the 
career of Frederick Douglass."

Colored children need to be taught self respect and pride 
in their own group. Nothing can do this more quickly and more 
surely than teaching them that certain representatives of their 
race have accomplished something worth while and have reached 
lofty heights in spite of fearful disadvantages under which 
they have labored. I was sure that Douglass Day would be instrumental 
of much good.

I failed to introduce "Animal Day" into the public school 
system although I tried hard to do so. I urged the School 
Board to set aside one day in the year in which special effort 
would be made to teach children to be kind to animals. I 
wanted to call their attention to the fact that people could be 
cruel to animals, even if they did not beat them and kick them 
about. I wished to have children in the public schools taught 
that if they did not attend to their pets properly, if they did 

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not give them water and food regularly and keep them clean, 
if they hung birds confined in a cage in the hot sun for a 
long time, or kept them in a draught, for instance, they were 
being cruel to these helpless creatures, even if they did 
not inflict upon them physical pain. I desired that this and 
kindred information should be given to the children on Animal 
Day by holding exercises consisting of recitations, essays and 
speeches on animals. A long time after this effort was made, 
this idea was carried out in another way.

But I did introduce a measure which completely revolutionized 
the methods previously used for admitting pupils into the 
Normal School. Before this measure was adopted, pupils who wished 
to enter the Normal School were required to take an examination 
and submit to a physical test after graduating from the High 
School. For many years there had been a great deal of dissatisfaction 
and criticism of the school authorities and charges of unfairness 
as a result of this method were commonly heard. It was 
frequently asserted open and above board by disgruntled parents 
and by pupils who failed to pass that a great deal of favoritism 
had been shown certain fortunate ones in an oral test that was 
given which counted 25% in the final mark the pupil received. 
This caused much bitterness, of course.

When, therefore, my resolution to allow all graduates from 
the High School to enter the Normal School was passed, there was 
great rejoicing in the land. Then everybody had a chance to 
make a good teacher. It frequently happened that the pupils 
whose marks were lowest in the High School stood at the head of 
classes when they graduated from the Normal School. These facts 
seemed to me to justify the strenuous efforts I exerted to do 
away with this examination for admission into the Normal School 
and allow everbody who graduated from the High School to enter, 
if he wished to do so.

Many incidents occurred to prove that the teachers in the 
white schools disregarded my race entirely, when they wished

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