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Ballot Blocked Episode 2 - The Transnational Activism of Mary Church Terrell

Seated black and white image of Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell

Library of Congress

This episode explores the transnational organizing of African American women at the turn of the 20th century. A key figure in this movement was Mary Church Terrell. An educator, writer, civil rights advocate, and suffragist, Terrell worked to advance the causes of racial justice and gender equality in the United States and around the globe. Her incredible life and work demonstrate the possibilities and the limits of transnational feminism in the decades before and after ratification of the 19th Amendment.

To learn more about Mary Church Terrell, we interviewed Dr. Noaquia Callahan Banks. She is a professor of history at Victor Valley College in California. Dr. Callahan Banks’s groundbreaking research draws on Terrell’s German language diaries, along with other German language sources, to understand Terrell’s influence on feminist organizing on both sides of the Atlantic. Her scholarship also reveals the important connections that developed between Black women’s clubs in the U.S. and women’s organizations abroad.

Part of a series of articles titled Ballot Blocked Podcast.

Last updated: October 21, 2024