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• 1 2018-10-04T10:43:49+00:00 Engaged Alumna 7 plain 2018-10-08T14:49:54+00:00 Mary Church Terrell loved Oberlin College and maintained ties to the institution and the friends she made here throughout her life. Terrell’s affection for Oberlin, however, did not keep her from speaking up when the College failed to abide by its own principles with regard to the inclusion of students regardless of race.  There was a period when relations were strained, but Oberlin College followed Terrell's accomplishments closely (as is evident in the many mentions in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine) and honored her on several occasions.

  1890s

  Upon graduation, Terrell and her classmates Ida Gibbs and Anna Julia Cooper were in high demand for teaching positions at “colored” schools, and Adelia Field Johnston, Principal of the Ladies Department, wrote Terrell such a glowing letter of recommendation that Terrell lamented having lost her copy.  Indeed Johnston thought so highly of Terrell that she offered her a faculty position as registrar at Oberlin College in 1891.  Terrell wrestled with the decision but declined, choosing to remain in D.C. to marry Robert as they had planned (CWWW 103).

  1900s

  Terrell returned to campus in June 1900 for a class reunion and participated in the program of events as a respondent to the welcoming addresses, one of which was given by Johnston.
  
  A visit to her alma mater in the spring of 1904 coincided with a speaking engagement by Booker T. Washington, leader of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.   The Oberlin Review notes that Washington, Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King, and Terrell spoke at the Second M. E. Church, on Tuesday, May 10, 1904, and that “the speeches of all were highly appreciated.”  The following day Terrell delivered what was known as the “Thursday Lecture,” a regular monthly event; her talk was “The Bright Side of a Dark Subject,” and she spoke before the largest audience for a Thursday lecture of that year.

  1910s

  Terrell and classmate Azariah Smith Root were elected to serve as two of the vice presidents of the General Alumni Association in 1913-14, the same year her daughters attended Oberlin - Mary enrolled in the College, and Phyllis, a who was a few years younger, enrolled in the Academy.  Terrell recounts in her memoir that she stayed with her girls in Oberlin for several months.  She was distressed when she learned that the “colored girls” were housed in only two dormitories, and one of them was a “substitute for the old Stewart Hall,” a reference to the 'low rent' dorm. Terrell spoke to College Secretary George M. Jones about this segregation and was shocked to hear that he discouraged social interaction between “colored” and white students.  Terrell confronted President King about the obvious racism of Jones and forcefully expressed her disappointment and heartache over the “back-sliding” of Oberlin College. Not surprisingly, her daughters finished their schooling elsewhere.

  
  1920s

  This experience troubled Terrell for years.  A decade later, she relates her disillusionment in a series of letters to Daisy Matter, a classmate from the Literary Department. This warm exchange with an old friend convinced Terrell, despite some considerable personal challenges, to attend the 40th reunion class of the 1884 in June 1924. (Terrell is in the first row, third from the left).