Highlighting new findings from her biography, Unceasing Militant, Alison Parker will share how Mary Church Terrell’s family history of enslavement and of opportunities and dangers during Reconstruction helped shape her activism. The Oberlin College graduate became an educator and served as the first Black woman on the Washington, D.D. board of education. As a leader in the National Association of Colored Women, the Constitution League, and then the NAACP, Terrell became a public lecturer. Pointing to the violence of white enslavers who had raped enslaved women, including both of her grandmothers, as well as to the violence of lynching that even ended the life of one of her childhood friends, Terrell spoke frequently in New York City, calling for Black men’s and women’s voting rights, as well as for federal anti-lynching legislation and an end to segregation.

Alison M. Parker is the Chair & Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware.