THE PLEIADES PROJECT

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) & A Women’s SPLENDIFEROUS Suffrage Extravaganza!

8/28/2020

by Noelle McMurtry

illustration by Elizabeth van Os

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was an eminent writer, educator, and civil rights activist, who co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and was an original signatory of the charter to establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Born in Memphis to an affluent family, her parents, both formerly enslaved, were successful entrepreneurs. Her mother, Louisa Ayres Church, owned a hair salon, and Terrell’s father, Robert Reed Church, was the first African American millionaire in the South. Terrell’s parents stressed the importance of education, and Terrell attended Oberlin Academy and Oberlin College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Languages, as well as a Master’s degree.

Upon graduation, Terrell taught at Wilberforce College in Ohio, and in 1887, she moved to Washington DC to teach at the M Street Colored High School, which later became Dunbar High School. In 1892, Terrell suffered the loss of her close friend, Thomas Moss, who had been lynched by a white mob in Memphis over the success of Moss’s business. This tragic murder spurred Terrell’s activism: she joined forces with Ida B.Wells-Barnett in anti-lynching campaigns and lobbied President Benjamin Harrison with activist, author, and civil rights activist Frederick Douglass to condemn lynching. In 1896, she co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), serving as its first president. The NACW adopted Terrell’s motto, “Lifting As We Climb,” which exemplified her philosophy of uplifting the social and economic status of African Americans. Terrell advocated for education, employment opportunities, and community activism as a means of improving the daily lives of African Americans and combatting the virulent racial discrimination they faced. In promoting education for all African Americans, Terrell served on the Washington Board of Education from 1895-1901 and from 1906-1911.

Terrell was also a passionate advocate for women’s suffrage. Undeterred by the racism that coursed through the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, she advocated for the rights of Black women, arguing that Black women’s suffrage would both enfranchise them and uplift all African Americans. In 1898 and 1900, Terrell spoke at the biennial meetings of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), stressing that Black women were forced to confront the double barriers of racial and gender discrimination. As a suffragist, Terrell’s intersectional outlook deeply informed her activism; she picketed Woodrow Wilson’s White House with members of the National Woman’s Party and spoke at the International Council of Women in Germany in 1904, presenting her speech in German. Throughout her career, Terrell became a sought-after orator and writer in the United States and abroad. In 1940, she published her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World, which described her experiences, successes, and the prejudice she faced throughout her life as an African American woman activist and educator in the United States.

After World War II, Terrell’s activism continued, and she committed herself to combating segregation in Washington DC. While DC passed anti-discrimination laws in the 1870’s, twenty years later, these laws had been steadily eroded, and African Americans were banned and excluded from public places, such as restaurants. In 1950, Terrell and her fellow activists entered the segregated Thompson Restaurant and asked to be served. When they were refused, they sued. Terrell continued to target segregationist policies through boycotts, picketing, and sit-ins. In 1953, segregated eating places were declared unconstitutional in Washington DC, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. That same year, at the age of 90, Terrell died in Highland Beach, Maryland. In the course of her long life, Mary Church Terrell witnessed how her passionate advocacy had advanced the causes of equality and justice in American society, tirelessly devoting her life to advancing civil rights for African Americans through anti-lynching legislation, supporting women’s suffrage, ending segregation laws, and breaking down barriers to access education and economic opportunities.

For more Info

The History Chicks have a great two part podcast on Mary Church Terrell

Part one

Part two

Sources
1. Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), National Park Service, accessed on August 9, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-church-terrell.htm.
2.Michals, Debra. Marcy Church Terrell, National Women’s History Museum, accessed on August 9, 2020, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-church-terrell.
3.Steptoe, Tyna. Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), Black Past, accessed on August 9, 2020, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/terrell-mary-church-1863-1954.

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Mizzi - Maria Zimmermann

7/27/2020

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by Noelle McMurtry

Maria Zimmermann

Maria “Mizzi” Zimmermann (1879-1975) was an artist’s model and romantic partner of Gustav Klimt. In 1887, at 18 years old, she first met Klimt, then 35 years old, in passing on the street, and their professional and romantic relationship began soon afterwards. She posed for many of his paintings as a model, a less “visible” role in the artistic process than Klimt’s wealthier, female portrait subjects, since she often appeared unnamed. In Klimt’s Schubert at the Piano, a painting commissioned by Greek industrialist Nikolaus Dumba in 1898, we find Mizzi standing at the far left of the canvas, illuminated by candlelight, intently watching Franz Schubert, Klimt’s favorite composer, play, her likeness represented as one of the guests at the salon gathering.

Zimmermann and Klimt had two sons together, Gustav (1889-1976) and Otto, who was born in 1902, and died within the same year. While Klimt lived a modest lifestyle as a freelance artist, he rented Mizzi and their children a small apartment. When their relationship ended, he provided financially for his son, Gustav, until his death. Klimt left Maria Zimmerman a small sum in his will, but he did not legally identify any of his children as heirs. Although she lived to be 96 years old, Mizzi never owned a single painting by Klimt or benefitted from the sale of his works posthumously, even though her body and likeness were frequently represented.

Schubert at the Piano (1899)

Her relationship to Hope I (1903), however, is not as direct as the painting may suggest. Indeed, Mizzi was not the actual model for this painting, although she was pregnant and gave birth to Otto during the period that Klimt painted the work. Instead, Herma, an artist's model who is known to history only by her first name, represents Hope with the promise of new life within her. Mizzi’s “essence,” though, pervades the painting through historical speculation. Originally, Klimt sketched a male figure in the painting, comforting Hope. After Otto’s death, he re-configured the painting, removing the male figure. Instead, Hope stands alone with her baby, still surrounded by a halo of light, but now menaced by the skeletons and ghouls behind her. Hope, however, does not seem to be afraid, or perhaps, she cannot yet see the deathly forces beside her.

Composer Lacy Rose writes of her impetus to compose the song cycle Hope I, “Mizzi represents so many of the women in the paintings whose names and lives are lost to time but whose images are immortalized by the painters, often male painters whose names we still remember. For me, I felt it my duty to help Mizzi reclaim her personhood… This is the story of Maria ‘Mizzi’ Zimmermann. The first movement shows Mizzi as an old lady after the passing of Gustav Klimt and rediscovering the painting she helped inspire. The second movement is written from her perspective inside the painting as Mizzi describes what she sees. And the third movement is Mizzi seeing the spectator and asking the viewer to take her out of the painting.”

Water Serpents II (1907)

SOURCES
1. Markus, Georg. „Sensationeller Fund: Klimts Geliebte spricht“ Kurier. January 1, 2018. Accessed November 21, 2019.
https://kurier.at/kultur/klimts-geliebte-spricht/307.523.783.
2. Rose, Lacy. Liner Notes to Ria. Released by Lacy Rose. 2018.

Hope I (1903)

Mother and Child, detailed section of Three Ages of Woman (1905)

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Clara Schumann

4/14/2020

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by Noelle McMurtry

Clara Schumann (1819-1896), a German Romantic-era pianist, composer and piano teacher, was a celebrated virtuoso. From the age of eleven, she managed a 61-year concert career, touring throughout Europe. Her success as a concert artist secured essential income for her family, including her husband, the renowned composer Robert Schumann, who suffered from mental illness, and their eight children. She began composing as a child, and her compositions later included solo piano pieces, chamber music, choral works and lieder.

At the age of 13, Clara began to compose one of her most famous works, Piano Concerto in A minor, which she premiered in Leipzig at age 16, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. Clara’s compositional output, however, was often sporadic, due to her heavy touring schedule, the management of her large household, and the financial, emotional and medical support that she needed to provide for her husband.

Although Robert encouraged her composition during their courtship, even publishing together a volume of joint lieder in 1841, Zwölf Gedichte aus F.Rückert's Liebesfrühling von Robert und Clara Schumann, he became less supportive once they had married. From her diaries, Clara expressed intense self-doubt about her compositional abilities. She wrote in 1839, “I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not wish to compose – there never was one able to do it. Am I intended to be the one? It would be arrogant to believe that.” After Robert’s death in 1856, Clara composed only two other pieces. Instead, she turned her energies to performing, teaching and raising her children. After decades of neglect, Clara Schumann’s compositions are now more frequently performed and recorded.

Further advocacy and research is needed, however, to establish her legacy as an influential Romantic-era composer and to offer a more nuanced interpretation of her life and artistic contributions.

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a pleiades blog

Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) & A Women’s SPLENDIFEROUS Suffrage Extravaganza!

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Mizzi - Maria Zimmermann

Clara Schumann

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