Mary Church Terrell

"Surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep."

 Mary Eliza Church was born on September 23, 1863 to free, middle-class parents in Memphis, Tennessee. She attended elementary and high school in the north, and received a bachelor's degree in the classics from Oberlin College in 1884, serving as editor of the Oberlin Review and being named class poet. She was one of the first African American women in the country to earn a college degree. She then taught at Wilberforce College in Xenia, Ohio and at M Street High School (now Dunbar High) in Washington DC before returning to Oberlin for a master's degree. She then studied in Europe for two years, and when she returned she married Robert H. Terrell, her supervisor at M Street.

Married women were not allowed to teach at the time, and she became active in women's suffrage and civil rights movements, writing and lecturing throughout the south and the east.  In 1896 she became president of the newly-founded National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. She served on the Washington DC Board of Education from 1895 through 1906, the first African American woman in the country to hold such a position. In 1904 she was invited to participate at the International Congress of Women in Berlin, and she gave her speech in German and French as well as English.

Along with Ida Wells-Barnett, Terrell was one of the two African American women signing the call that led to the formation of the NAACP in 1909. She was also a founder and charter member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. During World War I she worked with the War Camp Community Service, providing recreation and demobilization help for African American servicemen. After the war she was a delegate to the International Peace Conference in London. When the 19th amendment gave women the vote she was elected president of the Women's Republican League during Harding's campaign in 1920.

Terrell continued her public appearances for civil rights with the goal of educating the white population about the discrimination, lynching and disenfranchisement of African Americans. In 1950 at the age of 86 she participated in a sit-in at Thompson's Cafeteria in Washington, and was part of a lawsuit filed when the group was not served. Three years later the Supreme Court in their favor, which was the beginning of desegregation in Washington. She died July 24, 1954 at the age of 90 in Annapolis, Maryland.

Charles H Houston

"From the start, it was evident that [Houston] had a mind ideally contoured for a career at law. He relished the kind of abstract thinking needed to shape the building blocks of the law. He had a clarity of thought and grace of phraseology, a retentive brain, a doggedness for research, and a drive within him that few of his colleagues could match or understand." ~ Richard Kluger, Simple Justice

Charles Hamilton Houston was born September 3, 1895 in Washington, D.C. His father was an attorney, later serving as Assistant U. S. Attorney General, and his mother had taught school before their marriage. Houston attended M Street High School (now Paul L. Dunbar High), one of the few academic high schools for African Americans at the time. He won a scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Magna Cum Laude as valedictorian in 1915. He returned to Washington and taught English composition and literature at Howard University until the outbreak of World War I.

Houston enlisted in the Army and applied for Officer's Candidate School. He served as a First Lieutenant in the Infantry in France, and the unequal treatment of African American soldiers he witnessed and experienced there shaped his future as an attorney. In Richard Kluger's biography of Houston, Simple Justice, he is quoted as saying, “I made up my mind that I would never get caught again without knowing my rights; that if luck was with me, and I got through this war, I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”

Houston returned to the states in February of 1919, and events of that year's Red Summer of riots also influenced him as his father -- who usually worked in civil law -- took the case of Theodore Micajah Walker, who was accused of murder while defending himself. Walker was found guilty by an all-white jury.

In the fall, Houston was accepted at Harvard Law School. He was the first African American to serve on the Law Review, and graduated in the top 5% of his class in 1922. He stayed on at Harvard to earn a doctorate in Juridical Science under Felix Frankfurter, and spent another year at the University of Madrid where he was granted a doctorate in Civil Law.

Houston then joined his father's law firm and began teaching part-time at the Howard Law School. He became an Associate Professor in 1929, and Dean of the Law School in 1932. He raised the academic standards and improved the library and curriculum, setting high standards for students and training them in civil rights law. Said student Thurgood Marshall,

"He used to tell us that doctors could bury their mistakes but lawyers couldn't. And he'd drive home to us that we would be competing not only with white lawyers but really well-trained white lawyers, so there just wasn't any point crying in our beer about being Negroes. … He made it clear to all of us that when we were done, we were expected to go out and do something with our lives."

Recruited as the NAACP's first full-time paid legal counsel in 1935, Houston systematically chose a succession of cases to challenge the constitutionality of the "separate but equal" basis of Plessy v Ferguson. Many involved education, and others addressed union membership, restrictive clauses in real estate sales, and hiring practices. Dating back to his days at Howard Law School, there were few civil rights cases that were heard by the U. S. Supreme Court that Houston was not involved in, and these cases laid the groundwork for the landmark Brown decision in 1954.

Houston died of a heart attack on April 22, 1950 in Washington, and received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal posthumously that year. As his protege Thurgood Marshall rose to prominence his contribution to justice for African Americans became more widely known. The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute For Race and Justice at Harvard is named in his honor, as is Charles Hamilton Houston Hall, the main building at the Howard Law School. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Matthew Henson

“As I stood there on the top of the world and I thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it [North Pole], I felt profoundly grateful that I had the honor of representing my race.” ~ Matthew Henson

Matthew Alexander Henson was born August 8, 1866 in Nanjemoy, Maryland near Baltimore, and grew up in Washington, DC. Orphaned at an early age, he went to sea as a cabin boy on a merchant ship when he was 11 or 12. For the next several years he sailed around the world, educating himself in mathematics and navigation, and became a skilled navigator.

While working as a stock boy at a fur and supplies store in Washington DC in 1887 Henson met explorer Robert E. Peary, who hired him as a valet to accompany him on his travels. Their first journey was to Nicaragua where Peary had a government contract to survey the land for a possible canal to be built there. Peary was impressed with Henson's map-making ability and made him his assistant.

For years they explored together, primarily in the Arctic in attempts to reach the North Pole. Henson traded with the Inuit, learning their language and local skills such as sled-building. Their name for him was "Maye-Paluq", which translates as "Kind One." Harvard ethnographer and explorer S. Allen Counter found that both Henson and Peary fathered children in Greenland during their 1906 visit.

Along with native sled-bearers Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah, Henson and Peary were successful in reaching the Pole on April 6, 1909. At the time, Peary was riding in the sled because of frostbite and Henson had gone ahead as a scout, arriving at the spot calculated to be correct about 45 minutes before the rest of the party. When they arrived Peary handed Henson an American flag which he planted at the site. Later Peary's calculations showed the Pole to be about three miles away. He set off to that site with Egingwah and Seegloo, placing a flag there as well. Further controversy about the location of the pole has followed throughout the years, including Frederick Cook's claim that he arrived there a year before Henson and Peary. Nevertheless, Peary was recognized by Congress as having "attained" the Pole.

Peary returned to acclaim and was awarded the rank of Rear Admiral in the U. S. Navy. He did not recognize Henson's contribution, and Henson found work parking cars in a garage in New York City. After pressure from African American leaders, President Taft gave him a Civil Service position as a messenger in a U. S. Customs House.

Henson died on March 9, 1955 at the age of 88 and was buried in the Bronx. Dr. Coulter petitioned to have him and his wife, Lucy, who had died in 1968, reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery. On April 6, 1988 (the 79th anniversary of the discovery of the North Pole) a ceremony was held with full military honors and Henson's American and Inuit descendants in attendance.

Sgt. Major Christian A. Fleetwood

"Johnny Reb woke us with a few shells. Got his answer and left. Green wounded." ~ Diary Entry, June 10, 1864, Christian Fleetwood

Christian Abraham Fleetwood was born on July 21, 1840 in Baltimore and graduated from Ashman Institute (now Lincoln University) in Oxford, Pennsylvania in 1863 after spending time in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

He enlisted in the U.S. Colored Infantry in 1863 with the rank of sergeant due to his education, and was promoted to sergeant major three days later. He saw action in North Carolina and Virginia, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm on September 29, 1864 near Richmond. Of the nearly 200,000 African American men who served in the Union forces, he was one of 25 receiving this medal.

Fleetwood kept a pocket diary with daily entries during the year 1864. It can be seen at the Library of Congress website. His Medal of Honor is on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

After the war, officers in his regiment petitioned for Fleetwood to receive a commission, which Secretary of War Edwin Stanton declined. Fleetwood worked for two years in Ohio before returning to Washington DC to work for the Freedmen's Bank and the War Department. He helped to organize a National Guard battalion for the area, and was appointed its commanding officer in 1887 with the rank of major. Along with Major Charles B Fisher he also formed the DC Colored High School Cadet Corps and served as its first instructor.

Although deafened during his Army service, Fleetwood was choirmaster of four Washington churches. He died on September 28, 1914 at the age of 74.