Parker to Speak on Black Feminist and Activist Mary Church Terrell Oct. 27

The Harmon Hotz Lecture Committee will present "Black Feminist and Civil Rights Activist: The Life of Mary Church Terrell" with Alison M. Parker of the University of Delaware at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 27 in Giffels Auditorium in Old Main.

This talk spotlights the activism of Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), who was born into slavery during the Civil War, and who waged a freedom struggle against lynching and racism and in support of women's votes, equal education, anti-war efforts and civil rights.

Dedicated to changing the culture and institutions that perpetuated inequality throughout the United States, Terrell was a suffragist, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a founding member of the NAACP. One of the most prominent activists of her time, Terrell's remarkable career bridged the late 19th century to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s.

Alison M. Parker is chair of the Department of History at the University of Delaware and is the Richards Professor of American History. She has research and teaching interests at the intersections of gender, race, citizenship and the law in U.S. history. She majored in art history and history at the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University.

In 2017-2018, Parker was an Andrew Mellon Advanced Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, where she worked on her biography of the Civil Rights activist and suffragist Mary Church Terrell.