Quotes from Mary Church Terrell

Lifting as they climb onward and upward they go struggling and striving and hoping that the buds and blossoms of their desires may burst into glorious fruition ere long.

While most girls run away from home to marry, I ran away to teach.

It is only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great.

To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth.

Seeing their children touched and seared and wounded by race prejudice is one of the heaviest crosses which colored women have to bear.

While most girls run away from home to marry, I ran away to teach.

As the brains of colored women expanded, their hearts began to grow. No sooner had the heads of a favored few been filled with knowledge than their hearts yearned to dispense blessings to the less fortunate of their race.

I will not shrink from undertaking what seems wise and good, because I labor under the double handicap of race and sex; but, striving to preserve a calm mind with a courageous, cheerful spirit, barring bitterness from my heart, I will struggle all the more earnestly to reach the goal.