Nobody wants to know a colored woman's opinion about her own status of that of her group. When she dares express it, no matter how mild or tactful it may be, it is called 'propaganda,' or is labeled 'controversial.' Those two words have come to have a very ominous sound to me.
Mary Church TerrellPlease stop using the word "Negro."... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.
Mary Church TerrellIt is only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great.
Mary Church Terrell... no young colored person in the United States today can truthfully offer as an excuse for lack of ambition or aspiration that members of his race have accomplished so little, he is discouraged from attempting anything himself. For there is scarcely a field of human endeavor which colored people have been allowed to enter in which there is not at least one worthy representative.
Mary Church TerrellThe elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens...because the word 'people,' by an unparalleled exhibition of lexicon graphical acrobatics, has been turned and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, or who took the trouble to be born white instead of black.
Mary Church Terrell