[3][4] After the Civil War, Louisa opened a store selling wigs and hair extensions, which gave the family financial security.

[4] Robert opened a saloon; when he was denied a license due to his race, he successfully sued the State of Tennessee for violating the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

[5] He grew rich buying property around Beale Street after the Memphis massacre of 1866 and yellow fever epidemic of 1878,[6] becoming one of the first black millionaires in the American South[7][8] and an influential member of the Republican party.

[13][14] In 1871, when Mary Church was 8 years old, her parents sent her to Antioch College's Model School in Yellow Springs, Ohio and hired a tutor to teach her German.

She enrolled in the four-year "gentleman’s course" instead of the expected two-year ladies' course, despite being warned that the course was difficult and that being overeducated would make it hard to find a husband.

While most of her classmates were white, and she experienced occasional racial discrimination, she considered herself popular and felt her high social class carried more weight than her race.

[17] She earned a Bachelors of Arts degree in 1884, graduating alongside Anna Julia Cooper and Ida Gibbs Hunt; the three activists would become lifelong colleagues.

[27] In 1892, Terrell, along with Helen Appo Cook, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna Julie Cooper, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Mary Jane Patterson and Evelyn Shaw, formed the Colored Women's League in Washington, D.C.

[35] What grew out of Terrell's association with NAWSA was a desire to create a formal organizing group among African-American women to tackle issues of lynching, the disenfranchisement of the race, and the development of educational reform.

Terrell went on to give more addresses, such as "In Union There is Strength", which discussed the need for unity among African-American people, and "What it Means to be Colored in the Capital of the U.S.", in which she discussed her own personal struggles that she faced as an African American woman in Washington, D.C.[39] Terrell also addressed the Seneca Falls Historical Society in 1908 and praised the work of woman suffragists who were fighting for all races and genders alongside their primary causes.

[40] In A Colored Woman In A White World, Terrell recalls how she was able to navigate her college years at the predominantly White-attended Oberlin with a sense of ease due to her racial ambiguity.

In 1913, Alice Paul organized a NAWSA suffrage rally where she initially planned to exclude Black suffragists and later relegated them to the back of the parade in order to curry favor with Southern Euro-American women.

In the 1880s and 1890s she sometimes used the pen name Euphemia Kirk to publish in both the black and White press promoting the African American Women's Club Movement.

[41] She wrote for a variety of newspapers "published either by or in the interest of colored people,"[42] such as the A.M.E. Church Review of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Southern Workman of Hampton, Virginia; the Indianapolis Freeman; the Afro-American of Baltimore; the Washington Tribune; the Chicago Defender; the New York Age; the Voice of the Negro; the Women's World; the North American Review and the Norfolk Journal and Guide.

One of these campaigns includes a petition both Terrell and Douglass signed, in 1893, in hopes of a hearing of statement regarding lawless cases where black individuals in certain states were not receiving due process of law.

In 1909, Terrell was one of two African-American women (journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the other) invited to sign the "Call" and to attend the first organizational meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), becoming a founding member.

Terrell appealed the matter to the national office which affirmed her eligibility, but the D.C. chapter changed its rules to make membership contingent on approval from its board of directors.

After the chapter refused to amend its bylaws, the AAUW's national office filed a lawsuit in federal district court on Terrell's behalf, but lost the case.

[45] In 1948 Terrell won the anti-discrimination lawsuit (against the AAUW) and regained her membership, becoming the first black member after the exclusion of people of color within the DC chapter.

Before then, local integration laws dating to the 1870s had required all eating-place proprietors "to serve any respectable, well-behaved person regardless of color, or face a $1,000 fine and forfeiture of their license."

Attorney Ringgold Hart, representing Thompson, argued on April 1, 1950, that the District laws were unconstitutional, and later won the case against restaurant segregation.

[1][47] Terrell was a leader and spokesperson for the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the District of Columbia Anti-Discrimmination Laws which gave her the platform to lead this case successfully.

On October 18, 1891, in Memphis, Church married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who became the first black municipal court judge in Washington, DC.

Soon after meeting, Francis offered Mary the opportunity to teach at the M Street High School, in the Greek and Latin Department, which Robert was the head of.

Documentation from Mary's diary and letters that she wrote in both French and German in order to practice her language proficiency contain proof of correspondence with other men besides Robert.

While she had been away, Robert became a lawyer, though it is speculated that he regretted leaving his teacher job but he wanted to have an income in which he could afford to propose to Mary and support their life together.

[33][page needed] Mary's miscarriage had lasting effects on her marriage to Robert; she suffered long-term health complications which sent her into a deep depression.

Eventually, Terrell began to focus on anti-lynching activism and spoke publicly about black women's health, utilizing her past trauma and experiences to inform her message.