Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation's Capital

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an eighty-six-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson's Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country's first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindica...