Mary Church Terrell Quotes

We congratulate ourselves upon having two such efficient and zealous workers as Miss Wells and Mr. Fortune to address us tonight. The harvest truly is great but the labourers are few.

She used her brain and systematized her work, so that she might find time to do good in the world. The time many wives and mother of her day frittered away in gayety and embroidery she spent in reading and committing to memory choice thoughts in poetry and prose.

I can not believe that the great mass of Americans, who fought for freedom and who love justice, are awake to the shocking and systematic subversion of all law and order in the South. To ignorance and not to connivance must we charge the wicked apathy of some of the best citizens of the country. Open their eyes to the magnitude and hideousness of the evil flourishing in the South, blighting the lives and wrecking the happiness of men whose labor has enriched and whose blood has been shed for this country and I can not believe that by their silence and indifference they will continue to be accomplices in crime. Let us impress upon men and women whose hearts are not dead to law and love that there are citizens in the South who are deprived of all the rights of citizenship, denied even the right to life, who are hunted down and butchered like wild animals, and I am persuaded that the inquisition will be throttled to death.

Colored people so seldom tell certain truths about conditions which confront their race that when they do, even white people who are interested in them feel that they must be “bitter”. p.175

Lucretia Mott shines more brilliantly in the galaxy of the good and great because of her work as an abolitionist and her efforts to improve the condition of woman

In the early 1890’s it required a great deal of courage for a woman to publicly to acknowledge before an audience that she believed in suffrage for her sex when she knew a majority did not. p.144

Mr. Chauncy M. Depew in his oration delivered at the dedicatory exercises of the World’s Fair a few days ago said, “The United States is a christian country and a living and practical christianity is characteristic of its people.” In his conviction that this is a christian country, that a living and practical christianity is characteristic of its people we naturally conclude that Mr. Depew along with other truthful, law-abiding citizens of this great commonwealth is ignorant of the many barbarities, and the fiendish atrocities visited by the Southern Whites upon the defenceless and persecuted Blacks. We must conclude that Mr. Depew is not aware of the knavish methods employed to disfranchise the Negro or of the scandalous compliances resorted to which transform the courts from seats of justice into veritable haunts of inquisition and corruption wherever the Afro-American is concerned.

By a miracle the 19^th amendment has been ratified, we women now have a weapon of defense ... it will be a shame to us if we do not use it … we shall give our enemies a stick with which to break our head, Hold meetings, every time you meet a woman talk to her about going to the polls and vote! p.310

How long the emancipation of the slave might have been delayed, had it not been for those Female Anti-Slavery Societies established largely through the efforts of Lucretia Mott, and other noble women like her, no human being can tell...Many a poor trembling slave was lifted from bondage into freedom by means of the underground railroad which ran through the home of James and Lucretia Mott. She helped and befriended free colored people and protested in season and out against the cruel exhibition of prejudice against them from which they suffered in the North.

I could wish no better, brighter future for the boys and the girls who are so fortunate as to attend this beautiful, well-appointed Mott school than that they emulate the courage, the unselfishness, and the zeal in all good work which were such conspicuous and beautiful traits in the character of that saintly woman, for whom this building which we dedicate to day is named.

When Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented a resolution demanding equal political rights for Women in Seneca falls in 1848, the only person there willing to second it was Fredrick Douglas, … and it was his masterful arguments and matchless eloquence that the resolution passed despite powerful opposition. Therefore, whenever the women of this country pause long enough to think about the hard fight which had to be waged so as to enable them to enjoy their rights as citizens …they should remember the great debt of gratitude they owe to a colored man at a crucial occasion point when no other man was willing to come to their aid. pp. 169-170

the name of Lucretia Mott has been written in the history of this country which records the deeds of those who have spent their lives trying to lift their fellow men to a higher plane and relieve the suffering of the world in letters which can never fade.

Lucretia Mott traveled thousands of miles, when travelling was much more difficult and far less pleasant than it is to day, holding meetings all through New England and even venturing in some of the slave States to arouse the conscience and touch the hearts of the people concerning the woes and wrongs heaped upon 4,000,000 slaves. She was often debarred from the use of public halls and suffered persecution of every conceivable nature even at the hands of those who called themselves Christians — yes even from her own religious sect, the Quakers, because of her activity in behalf of the slave. Once but wonder at the cool, calm courage of the small, fragile, gentle Lucretia Mott who never at any time of her life weighed more than 90 pounds, and much of the time did not weigh even that, as she faced the violence of hostile mobs. More than once her long, gray Quaker cloak was singed with vitriol thrown at her through windows by howling, hooting mobs during the meetings which she addressed. Nothing illustrates the courage and the tact [of] the little woman more than an experience she had, when she, the other speakers and the audience were driven from an abolition meeting in Philadelphia by an angry mob. She placed a friend who was with her under the care of a gentleman. “But what will you do”, inquired the lady. “This man”, replied Mrs. Mott touching the arm of a man among the hooting ruffians who had broken up the meeting, “will see me through safely, I think.” The man was so impressed with the sweetness of her manner and the angelic expression of her countenance that he instantly responded to her appeal [and] protected her from further insult as they passed through the hostile crowd.

When Miss Wells, a journalist of the South, exiled for daring to use the prerogative of free speech in defence of her own race, fled to the South, it was Mr. Fortune who espoused her cause, and made it possible for her to continue the good work so nobly begun. We admire Miss Wells for her undaunted courage, we laud her zeal in so worthy a cause, we ecourage her ambition to enlighten the mind and touch the heart by a thrilling and earnest recital of the wrongs heaped upon her oppressed people in the South.

We extend to her a cordial welcome, we offer her our hearty support. In suppressing Miss Wells paper, the Free Speech, tyranny has wrought a good work of which it little dreamed. The fetters placed upon truth in the South are here transformed into weapons against itself.