Mary Church Terrell: An Original Oberlin Activist

The Village and the Union School

Like Yellow Springs, Oberlin was an integrated community - both in terms of neighborhoods and schools. When Terrell came to Oberlin in 1875 at age twelve she lived with the Vaughans, a mulatto family residing at 143 Groveland Street, which we know thanks to the fortuitous discovery in 1979 of a letter to Mollie from her father. It is not known how Mollie came to board with Vaughans (her father might have known someone in Mrs. Vaughan’s family), or how long she was with them, but the letter reveals that Robert Reed Church, a man accustomed to fine living, was not happy with Mollie’s accommodations:

I want your room furnished better.  I will send money on the eighteenth to pay your board.  Tell Mrs. Vaughan I will send her the money to fit up your room by the first of the month.  Then I will let her know just what I want and how I want it furnished. (Letter dated October, 15, 1875 from R. R. Church to Mollie.)

Although the Vaughans lived at the Groveland Street address the entire time Terrell was in Oberlin, she did not board with them during her college years.
Mollie attended the Union School which was completed the year before she arrived in Oberlin.  Like many communities in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Oberlin needed a new school building to accommodate the burgeoning public school population. Oberlin's impressive building, located on South Main Street, was known as the Union High School until 1926 when it was given to the College and became known as the Westervelt Building, after the donor.

After the passage of a local bond issue of $30,000 for construction of a school for all grades, Union School was built in 1873-1874. It provided 11 classrooms, a library, and a superintendent's office. Total cost was $37,000 with an additional $3,500 spent on furniture. Union School replaced a school on North Professor Street that was sold to the college for $5,000, and later known as Cabinet Hall, the college science lab (Oberlin News-Tribune). Built of Plum Creek brick and Amherst sandstone, the building was dedicated on November 9, 1874. There were 1052 school age children in Oberlin at that time. This building was the school for all children until Prospect and Pleasant Street schools were built in 1887. Later Union School was a high school only, it was granted a high school state charter in 1903.    Source: Ohio Historic Inventory.  Ohio Historical Society.


A page from the Teacher's Term Report to the Board of Education shows that in August of 1875 Mollie enrolled in the integrated Oberlin Union School in the ‘A Grammar’, which was the equivalent of eighth grade.  The branches of study included: "Reading. Writing, Arithmetic, English Grammar, Drawing, Vocal music, and General history. " At 12 years old, Terrell was one of the two youngest pupils - the oldest was 20. 

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