Mary Church Terrell, the well-known civil rights activist and suffragist, was his half-sister, born from his father's first marriage to Louisa Ayres.
The two became leaders of opposing parties in Memphis, with Josiah T. Settle, Jr, George Klepper, and Baily Walsh being Church's chief assistants.
[4] Church's faction occasionally supported Democrats in Memphis politics, as the Republican Party was increasingly unable to succeed in city-wide elections.
[1] Other key allies in Western Tennessee included Perry Howard, Roscoe Simmons, Emmett Scott, John R. Hawkins, James A. Cobb, and L. K.
[2] In 1940, Crump, who no longer regarded black Republicans as an asset and was increasingly resorting to racist demagoguery, began a campaign of retaliation against Church.
B. Martin, the head of the Negro American (Baseball) League, to succeed him as chair of the Shelby County Republican Party (which included Memphis).
Martin shared Church's dream of a multi-racial and competitive GOP in Tennessee but he too was forced to leave Memphis because of Crump's strong arm tactics including police searches of every customer who entered his drug store and a threat to put him in the workhouse.
[5] In 1942, Church lodged a complaint with the national committee of the Republican Party but, according to his friend, Perry W. Howard, decided to drop it because the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice investigation showed strong interest in a prosecution.
[6] In 1943, Church and Martin successfully persuaded labor leader A. Philip Randolph to visit Memphis to speak out against Crump's suppression of free speech.
Church persisted and in 1944 urged Roy Wilkins of the NAACP to make stronger efforts to pressure the Roosevelt Administration to take action but to no avail.