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Classroom · Grades 6–12

Mary Church Terrell

Terrell’s sixty-year career links the Black women’s club movement, the suffrage struggle, and the direct-action protests of the 1950s, showing how long campaigns for civil rights were built.

Lesson at a Glance

Grades
Grades 6–12
Time
One class period (20–40 minutes)
Standards
NCSS Themes 5 (Individuals, Groups, and Institutions) and 10 (Civic Ideals and Practices); C3 D2.His.2.6-8, D2.Civ.10.9-12
Reading
Mary Church Terrell (profile)

Big Idea

Terrell’s sixty-year career links the Black women’s club movement, the suffrage struggle, and the direct-action protests of the 1950s, showing how long campaigns for civil rights were built.

Before Class

Students read the profile of Mary Church Terrell, including the Key Dates and Sources.

Discussion Questions

  1. The lynching of Terrell’s friend Thomas Moss in 1892 turned her toward activism and also launched Ida B. Wells’s crusade. How can a single injustice set off movements that last for decades?
  2. The National Association of Colored Women took the motto “Lifting as We Climb.” What did that motto mean, and who might have been included or left out by it?
  3. Terrell told white suffragists to confront the double burden Black women carried. Why were race and gender difficult to separate in the fight for the vote?
  4. At eighty-six Terrell led sit-ins and pickets against segregated restaurants in Washington. Why is her Thompson campaign now read as an early model for the lunch-counter protests of 1960?

Activity

Students read the passage in Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors (1892) that discusses the Memphis lynching of Thomas Moss and his partners, then reread the profile’s account of how the same killing moved Terrell to organize. In small groups they create a two-column chart comparing Wells’s response (investigative journalism) with Terrell’s (club organizing, petitions, and later direct action). Groups then browse the Library of Congress’s Terrell Papers and each select one document title that shows another method she used. Close with a discussion of why movements need many kinds of activists (30–40 minutes).

Primary Sources

Cite this page
MLA
“Classroom lesson: Mary Church Terrell.” Black-History.com, 30 Sept. 2026, https://black-history.com/classroom/mary-church-terrell/.
APA
Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Classroom lesson: Mary Church Terrell. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/classroom/mary-church-terrell/
Chicago
Black-History.com Editors. “Classroom lesson: Mary Church Terrell.” Black-History.com. September 30, 2026. https://black-history.com/classroom/mary-church-terrell/.
Editorial Note

By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.

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