Mary Church Terrell and National Council of Negro Women Build Institutional Resistance

Mary Church Terrell, co-founder of the NAACP and first president of the National Association of Colored Women, continued organizing in the 1920s for anti-lynching legislation, equal education, and women's suffrage. Black women had fought for the 19th Amendment only to see it effectively denied in the South through the same disenfranchisement mechanisms used against Black men. Terrell and the NACW organized voter registration, anti-lynching campaigns, and community service institutions (schools, health clinics, libraries) to compensate for exclusion from white civic infrastructure. At 90 years old in 1953, Terrell would lead sit-ins desegregating Washington, D.C. restaurants.