Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
Pushed out of the mainstream suffrage movement by white leaders, Black suffragists through the 1800s founded their own clubs in cities across the U.S. With the creation of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896, suffragists Mary Church Terrell and co-founder Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin became instrumental in consolidating Black suffrage groups across the country. Their agenda went beyond women’s enfranchisement, addressing issues of job training, equal pay, educational opportunity and child care for African Americans.
Terrell, an educator, writer and organizer, also focused her work on fighting lynching, Jim Crow segregation and convict leasing, a system of forced penal labor. The daughter of formerly enslaved people who became successful business owners in Memphis, Tennessee, Terrell was one of the first Black women to obtain a college degree, earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Oberlin College. She also became the first Black woman appointed to the Washington, D.C.’s Board of Education, and led a successful campaign to desegregate the city’s hotels and restaurants.
source: https://www.history.com/news/black-suffragists-19th-amendment
In an 1898 address to the National American Women's Suffrage Association, she summarized her life’s work: “Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.”