1863 – 1954
Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) was an African American activist, educator, and public intellectual whose writings and speeches articulated an early intersectional analysis of race and gender. She argued that understanding the condition of Black women required attending to the compounded effects of racial discrimination and patriarchal exclusion, challenging both white feminists and male-dominated civil rights discourse. Her work constitutes a foundational contribution to African American feminist philosophy and the epistemology of situated knowledge.
Developed an early intersectional framework analyzing the compounded oppression of race and gender
Co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (1896), the first national organization of Black women
Charter member of the NAACP, helping institutionalize civil rights advocacy
First Black woman appointed to a Board of Education in Washington, D.C. (1895)
Authored A Colored Woman in a White World (1940), a landmark memoir and social critique