A Colored Woman in a White World

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was a forceful leader in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the movements for civil rights, women's rights, and world peace. As Nellie Y. McKay states in her introduction to Terrell's 1940 autobiography, she was a "quintessential race woman who fully met W. E. B. Du Bois's standards for the Talented Tenth, as well as those of the black club women's 'lifting as we climb' ideal." A fascinating and highly readable memoir, A Colored Woman in a White World documents Terrell's childhood, education, and her very significant contributions to social reform in the United States.