Fight On! : Mary Church Terrell's Battle for Integration

Rating:
Summary: Richie's Picks: FIGHT ON
Review: "Marbles was a popular children's game in the 1940s. The nation's capital held two marbles tournaments--one for the city's white youngsters and the other for its colored children. But Washington could send only one champion to the national marbles tournament. Instead of holding a playoff between the two winners, the city automatically selected the white champion to represent Washington in the national tournament. The colored champion was automatically named runner-up for the city. This was done to keep black and white children from playing marbles together--and to prevent the possibility of a black child winning the city and national titles.

"Washington, D.C., had a dog cemetery. But in the 1940s only animals belonging to white people could be buried there. Dogs whose owners were black were excluded. When asked about it, the owner of the pet cemetery joked that although the dogs wouldn't care, be believed the white customers would.

" 'Washington--Disgrace to the Nation,' an article by Howard Whitman in the February 1950 Woman's Home Companion, described black people being turned away from downtown restaurants and theaters. In one case, a group of black people, including some soldiers, tried to see a film called Home of the Brave DANGER DRAWS NO COLOR LINE! proclaimed posters outside the theater. But the theater manager phoned the police, who made sure that no black people got into the movie. Home of the Brave is a classic movie about a black soldier suffering from discrimination."

Most people perceive the modern Civil Rights Movement as having arisen in the mid-1950s. The Supreme Court's landmark decision on segregated schools--Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks being arrested after refusing to move to the back of the bus, and the horrific photos of Emmitt Till's mutilated corpse being published in Jet were unquestionably pivotal historic events that awakened the empathy and/or righteous anger in millions of Americans of good conscience.

But for half a century prior to those key events, Mary Church Terrell--a woman of color whose birth to slave parents took place while the ink on the Emancipation Proclamation was still drying--was walking into white establishments where she was not wanted, was cajoling Presidents to do the right thing, was involved in the founding of early Black Rights organizations, and was inspiring those future leaders of the Civil Rights Movement who are so well known to those of us who grew up in the 1960s.

I am embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing of Mary Church Terrell before reading this book. But this well-written and well illustrated biography has brought me up to speed.

" He yanked her roughly out of her seat and asked a man sitting nearby, 'Whose little ... is this?' "

After growing up with an unusually rich education, including a college degree from Oberlin, Mary Church Terrell spent decades working for equality alongside such major historic figures as Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Fredrick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, and W.E.B. Du Bois. She was a cofounder of the NAACP. But the work she did in her mid-80s was arguably the most important of all. After organizing campaigns in which she and other people of color attempted to eat in segregated D.C. establishments, she became part of a legal proceeding to compel the enforcement of D.C.'s long-ignored anti-discrimination laws. That fight eventually reached the Supreme Court.

"On June 8, 1953, William O. Douglas rose and presented the high court's ruling. 'The failure to enforce a law does not result in its repeal,' he said, expressing the Supreme Court's opinion."

What was the reaction of the ninety year old self-proclaimed meddler? She returned to the public cafeteria that had refused her business and had the bowl of soup she'd been waiting three years to enjoy. Then she gathered up some African American friends and headed to a segregated movie theater. Having been born at the end of slave days, prior to the enactment of the Jim Crow laws, Mary lived just long enough to savor the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision.

FIGHT ON: MARY CHURCH TERRELL'S BATTLE FOR INTEGRATION provides a great introduction to the foundations of the Civil Rights Movement. It is also bound to provide inspiration to many readers about trailblazing their own movements.