Document 1: Celebrating Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Centenary at Oberlin College
Authors: Mary Church Terrell, Henry Churchill King
Recipients: Henry Churchill King, Mary Church Terrell
Dates: 4 February 1911, 6 February 1911, 2 March 1911, 9 March 1911, 28 September 1911, 4 October 1911
Location: HC King 2/6 Box 72, Oberlin College Archives
Document Type: Typed Letter
Introduction
Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King and Mary Church Terrell exchanged these letters during 1911.1 Terrell used the Board of Education of the District of Columbia letterhead, underlining her name as it appears on the list of officers and adding her address to emphasize her national standing.
Courtesy of Oberlin College Archives
In her letters, Mary Church Terrell asked to give a lecture to Oberlin students about Harriet Beecher Stowe in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of Stowe’s birth, but King first postponed her request, then ultimately denied it, saying that Oberlin already had too many speakers that semester on the subject of race.2
Terrell’s letters to King show her strong commitment to Stowe’s legacy.3 Lecturing at Oberlin was only one way Terrell planned to celebrate Stowe; she wrote a short Appreciation of Harriet Beecher Stowe the same year she requested to speak at Oberlin. The pamphlet reflects Terrell’s understanding of Stowe, and may reveal her plans for her lecture. In twenty-three pages, Terrell describes Stowe’s impoverished upbringing, going on to praise Uncle Tom’s Cabin with reverence; she writes, “Having made every possible appeal that could move men to justice and mercy and right, having exhausted their powers of speech to bring conviction to stony hearts, the abolitionists saw their efforts had failed of success. Then it was that a book appeared that painted a picture of the Nation’s sins so true to life, in words which burnt so deeply and indelibly into the souls of men, that all Christendom stood aghast.”4 She goes on to emphasize Stowe’s gender as essential to her work and legacy: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin throbbed with the beats of a woman’s heart, wailed with her cry of anguish, trembled with her sympathy and was wet with her tears.” 5
As the first president of the College Alumnae Club, a club for Black women who attended respected colleges and universities, Terrell also set up a Washington celebration for Stowe at Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church. When addressing how and when the College Alumnae Club was founded, she dedicates a significant portion of the speech to show her gratitude for the club’s assistance with Stowe’s centenary.6 Terrell also established the Harriet Beecher Stowe scholarship through the National Association of Colored Women for young Black women pursuing literary careers.
These letters call attention to the great impact Stowe had on Terrell, particularly when thinking about collaborations and relationships between white and Black women in first-wave feminisms. She did not believe in an “easy or universal sisterhood,” making her insistence on honoring Stowe all the more significant.7 As Alison M. Parker writes, “Terrell bluntly told white women reformers: ‘I assure you that nowhere in the United States have my feelings been so lacerated, my spirit so crushed, my heart so wounded, nowhere have I been so humiliated and handicapped on account of my sex as I have been on account of my race.’”8
Transcription
[Letterhead]
James F. Oyster, President Board of Education of the District of Columbia
William V. Cox, Vice-President Franklin School Building
Barton W. Evermann Washington, D.C.
Ellen Spencer Mussey
Mary Church Terrell <326 Tea St. N.W.>
Justina R. Hill
Richard R. Horner
William D. Hoover
William V. Tunnell
Harry O. Hine, Secretary
A.T. Stuart, Superintendent of Public Schools
Feb. 4, 1911
My dear Prof. King:
Ever since I read your very strong and just utterance on conditions in Oberlin College relating to the status of the Colored students, I have wanted to write to thank you for your stand in this matter. But, I am a very busy woman, trying to spread myself over a much wider surface than I can comfortably or effectively cover,9 so that I have many good intentions which are never carried out. But this is really a business letter, so I shall proceed to the point. As you are aware, the 14th of next June is the centenary of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birth. I think the attention of the American people, particularly the students in our colleges, should be called to the great work she did for her country. I should like very much to deliver an address on Harriet Beecher Stowe to the students of Oberlin College, if arrangements can be made. A few weeks ago I delivered this address to our teachers and they seemed to enjoy it very much. Judge Stafford10 of the District Supreme Court was present and has said some very complimentary things about it. Will it be possible for you to arrange to have me speak to the students of Oberlin on Harriet Beecher Stowe<?> Surely there can be no objection to emphasizing the work she did for liberty in behalf of an oppressed <race,> along with her other achievements. So far as the race problem is concerned and everything pertaining there-unto, I am a pach<y>derm,11 so please be perfectly frank in expressing your opinion.
I hop<e> Mrs. King and your sons<,>12 who have grown up since I saw them<,> are well. Please greet them cordially for me. Please let me hear from you as soon as possible. With the best wishes and the highest esteem, I am very sincerely yours,
<Mary Church Terrell>
____________________________________________________________________________
February Sixth,
Nineteen Eleven.
Mrs. Robert H. Terrill, [sic]
385 Tea Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C.
My dear Mrs. Terrill:- [sic]
I thank you for your letter of February 4th, but I am sorry to have to say that I am afraid that it would be impossible for us to use any lecture the week of June 14th, as our final examinations run right thru that week and it seems impossible to bring lectures in during that examination period. I am sorry it happens just that way, for an address by you on Harriet Beecher Stowe would certainly not fail to be of special interest.
Very sincerely yours,
[Signature is faded, almost certainly Henry Churchill King]
____________________________________________________________________________
[Letterhead]
James F. Oyster, President Board of Education of the District of Columbia
William V. Cox, Vice-President Franklin School Building
Barton W. Evermann Washington, D.C.
Ellen Spencer Mussey
Mary Church Terrell <326 Tea St. N.W.>
Justina R. Hill
Richard R. Horner
William D. Hoover
William V. Tunnell
Harry O. Hine, Secretary
A.T. Stuart, Superintendent of Public Schools
Mar. 2, 1911
My dear President King:
In replying to my letter written recently you say it will be impossible to use any lecture the week of June 14th. I did not intend to ask you to open the way for me to speak on Harriet Beecher Stowe June 14th, but I intended to ask you to let me deliver an address on her life and work any time during the spring or even in the fall. If you yourself are too busy to make arrangements for such an address to whom may I write concerning the matter?
Will you tell me also what are the conditions of membership to the Phi Beta Kappa for students of previous years?13 Is invitation to membership based on scholarship alone or do other things enter into consideration in extending an invitation to graduates of former years? I am interested to get the facts concerning this matter and hope you will be kind enough to furnish them.
I should like very much to deliver my address on Mrs. Stowe to the students of Oberlin either this year or next year, if there is any way of having it arranged.
With best wishes for continued usefulness in your very important work and with the highest esteem, I am very truly yours,
<Mary Church Terrell>
____________________________________________________________________________
March Ninth,
Nineteen Eleven.
Mrs. Robert H. Terrell,
326 T Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C.
My dear Mrs. Terrell:-
I think we might be able to arrange for the address on Mrs. Stowe some time next fall, and if you will bring the matter up with me then I will see if it can’t be arranged.
So far membership in Phi Beta Kappa has been based entirely on the scholarship records. There will probably be some further invitations later, based on scholarship, combined with later distinguished service.
Very sincerely yours,
[Signature is faded, almost certainly Henry Churchill King]
____________________________________________________________________________
[Letterhead]
James F. Oyster, President Board of Education of the District of Columbia
William V. Cox, Vice-President Franklin School Building
Barton W. Evermann Washington, D.C.
Ellen Spencer Mussey
Mary Church Terrell
Justina R. Hill
Richard R. Horner
William D. Hoover
William V. Tunnell
Harry O. Hine, Secretary
Sept. 28, 1911
My dear President King:
Last spring I wrote to ascertain whether arrangements might be made for me to deliver an address on Harriet Beecher Stowe, and you told me you thought it might be done some time this fall. You told me to bring the matter up with you at that time and I am obeying orders now. I shall deliv<->er an address before the National Purity Association which meets in Colum<->bus from Oct. 23 to 27, I wish it were possible to deliver the address then. If it can not be arranged for that time, I shall try to come, when it is more convenient, if I possibly can. I hope you will try to arrange for the last week in October. Please let me hear from you as soon as possible. You will be pleased to know that I have been invited to deliver five addresses on the Race Problem before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, speaking every Tuesday afternoon from Nov. 28 to Dec. 19. Last year Dr. Felix Adler14 invited [me] to address the Ethical Culture Society of New York.
Since membership in the Phi Beta Kappa has been based entirely on scholarship records, I am very much surprised that my name is not included. I was once <told> that no member of my class stood any higher than I did in Greek and I was under the impression that my record in Latin was as high as was made.15 I do not question for a second the estimate made by those who examined the records. I am simply expressing my own surprise, because I certainly thought I stood among the first five. I was anything but brilliant in mathematics, however, and it is quite possible that lowered my record. I hope you have had a restful, refreshing vacation. We need you very much and we want you to care well for the physical man.
With best wishes and the highest esteem, I am very sincerely
<Mary Church Terrell>
____________________________________________________________________________
October Four,
Nineteen Eleven.
Mrs. Mary Church Terrell,
226 T St., N.W.,
Washington, D.C.
My dear Mrs. Terrell:
I brought up with our Lecture Committee <in the summer> the question of your address on Mrs. Stowe, and while they were all certain that your address would be an able and stimulating one, they felt that the number of lectures for the year, now that they are only given once a month, was so small that they must be careful to look out for a pretty wide range of subjects; and as I had given so much time just last year to a discussion before the students of the whole subject of democracy, and had emphasized its bearings on the race problem, they had the feeling that it would be better for the present to leave the matter just where it was. So they instructed me to go ahead and fill the dates for the year, and the dates for the monthly lectures are, as I say, now all filled.
Let me say again, that this means no lack of appreciation of the contribution that you would be sure to make in such an address, but only the feeling that we have, in so brief a course of lectures, to be careful not to seem to be confining the subjects to any two or three lines.
As to the Phi Beta Kappa list, of course the scholarship records do average the entire work of the student, so that even tho [sic] a high rank is attained in certain studies, if the rank is not high in some others it is likely to make the student not available. There can be no doubt, I think, about the accuracy of the estimate, as the estimates are all made in duplicate and carefully tested.
Very sincerely yours,
[Signature is faded, almost certainly Henry Churchill King]
Transcribed by Sarah Minion
1 Henry Churchill King (1858-1934) received his A.B. degree from Oberlin in 1879 and B.D. degree from the Theological Seminary in 1882. He served as a professor in the mathematics and philosophy departments and served as the Oberlin Registrar. After serving as Dean of the College for one year, he was elected in 1902 to serve as the President of the College. He served until he retired in June, 1927.
2 Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was an American abolitionist and author. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was widely recognized as a major impetus of the Civil War, as it exposed the horrors of slavery. Lectures given during King’s presidency are undated, so which speakers were prioritized over Terrell are unknown. However, in President King’s summary book of correspondence, a letter to Kelly Miller of Howard University indicates that Miller gave a lecture at Oberlin in January of 1911. Miller and King were wrote to each other about marriages between students, which could have been the subject of the lecture. Miller had also recently published Race Adjustment in 1909, and one of the essays could have been a topic of the lecture. Race Adjustment was discussed in the Mutual Improvement Club.
President King was also deeply invested in bringing William Howard Taft to speak at commencement, writing him every couple of years from 1911 to 1927. This is noteworthy given Terrell’s relationship with Taft when he served as Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt (Mary Church Terrell, “At a woman’s request, William Howard Taft, when Secretary of War, suspended the President’s order to dismiss, without honor, three companies of Negro soldiers,” undated, Mary Church Terrell: Professional Life binder, O. C. A.).
3 Her commitment to Stowe did not waiver; in Terrell’s autobiography, published almost thirty years later, she wrote: “There is no doubt that many of the men who fought in the Union Army had been induced to enter it because eleven years before the conflict, when they were boys, they had either read Uncle Tom’s Cabin themselves, or had heard it read aloud by their mothers to the family group. They were fighting, not only to preserve the Union, but also to deliver the slaves from the cruel bondage which Harriet Beecher Stowe had so graphically described in her book … No other author has ever done more with the pen for the cause of human liberty than she did.” (Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World (New Hampshire: Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc.: 1940), 280-282).
4 Mary Church Terrell, Harriet Beecher Stowe: An Appreciation, Washington, DC: Murray Bros. Press, 1911, 9.
5 Mary Church Terrell, Harriet Beecher Stowe: An Appreciation, 13.
6 An excerpt from the speech: “When I issued a call to the colored people of the country for appropriate celebration of the centennary [sic] of the birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe, June 14th, 1911, the College Alumnae Club volunteered to assist me. in [sic] making the Washington meeting a success. And nobly did they keep their word. My diary for ?ay [sic] 10th, 1911 reads: ‘The College Alumnae Club met at my house this evening. We discussed the Harriet Beecher Stowe Memorial Meeting. I told the members Mrs. Hay had accepted to be a patroness.’ Lyman Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s grandson accepted my invitation to deliver the principal address at the centennary [sic] of his grandmother. ABefore [sic] he left Washington he gave me this address and I have preserved it as a precious souvenir of the memorable occasions. The meeting was held in Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church and there was not standing room. Some of the most distinguished women in the national accepted the invitation to become patronesses of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Mrs. Stowe’s birth. Among that number may be mentioned Mrs. Sherman, the wife of the Vice President of the United States, Mrs. Murray Crane, the wife of the Senator from Massachusetts and Mrs. Hay, the widow of John Hay, who studied law in the office of Abraham Lincoln, was his private secretary when Mr. Lincoln became president and was Secretary of State when he died. The success of this meeting was largely due to the interest manifested in it by the College Alumnae Club and the efforts tge [sic] members exerted in its behalf. These activities in which the organization engaged during the first year of its existence make a record of which it has a right to be proud” (Mary Church Terrell, “How and When the College Alumnae Club Was Founded,” 1 March 1935, Mary Church Terrell: Professional Life binder, O. C. A.).
7 Alison M. Parker, Mary Church Terrell: Woman Suffrage and Civil Rights Pioneer (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2015), web address, accessed 24 August 2015.
8Alison M. Parker, Mary Church Terrell: Woman Suffrage and Civil Rights Pioneer (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2015), web address, accessed 24 August 2015.
9 Terrell was a charter member of the NAACP in 1909, two years prior to writing this letter. At this time she was also serving on the Board of Education in Washington, D.C.
10 Wendell Phillips Stafford (1861-1953) was a federal judge on United States District Courts for the District of Columbia from 1904 to 1931.
11 Coming from the term related to elephants, pachyderm means a thick-skinned or insensitive person.
12 His wife, Julia Coates King and his four sons, Philip Coates King, Donald Storrs King, Edgar Weld King, and Harold Lee King. In other letters to President King, Terrell expressed her interest in their well-being and gratitude for their family’s hospitality when Terrell had stayed with them (Oberlin College, Henry Churchill King historical portrait, Web address, accessed 15 July 2015).
13 The Phi Beta Kappa Society is an academic honors society founded in 1776 for students who demonstrate excellence in the arts and sciences. The Oberlin chapter was established in 1907, well after Terrell’s 1884 graduation, so she is inquiring about the qualifications for retroactive membership.
14 Dr. Felix Adler (1851-1933) was a German American professor and social reformer, credited with starting the Ethical Culture movement in 1876. Adler was active in New York improvement work, including tenement and health reform; he was involved in the National Urban League and the organization which became the American Civil Liberties Union. The Ethical Culture Society encouraged people to live ethical and meaningful lives, by separating theology from morality. He sought education that was integrated with creative arts, moral education, and personal development.
15 In her senior preparatory class, Mary Church received a 5.9 out of 6 for her recitation of the Iliad. Her Greek professor, Prin White, said, “Miss Church, you should be proud of that record.” Terrell also provides anecdotes about her high marks in college Greek and Latin (Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World, 40).
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