Mary Church Terrell fought against discrimination and was a figure in the women’s suffrage movement. She was a daughter of former slaves and was born on September 23, 1863 in Memphis Tennessee. She attended Antioch College laboratory school in Ohio and later in Oberlin College where she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. She taught for two years at Wilberforce College then moved to teach at M Street Colored School. She married Heberton Terrell and had 2 daughters. Around 1892, Terrell joined Ida B. Wells in anti-lynching campaigns, but she focused her life’s work on racial uplift and believed blacks would help end racial discrimination by advancing themselves through education, work, and community activism. Her words “Lifting as we climb” became the slogan of the National Association of Colored women, the group she helped found and was president from 1896 to 1901. As president she campaigned endlessly among black organizations and white mainstream white organizations and was very vocal. She also fought very hard for women’s suffrage. Terrell fought for women’s suffrage and civil rights because she said she realized she belonged to “the only group in the country that has two such huge obstacles to surmount…both sex and race.” In 1910 she co-founded the College Alumnae Club which was later renamed National Association of University Women. In 1948 she became the first black member of the American Association of University Women, after winning an anti-discrimination lawsuit. In 1950 she protested against John R. Thompson Restaurant in Washington D.C and in 1953 the Supreme Court ruled that segregated eating places were unconstitutional. Mary died four years later in 1954.