The Black Freedom Struggle

From the late 1930s through her death at age ninety in 1954, Terrell’s activism continued unabated. She engaged in significant civil rights and feminist work for the ERA and advocated for international peace. She chaired the National Committee to Free the Ingram Family, a committee of the Communist Party-supported Civil Rights Congress (CRC), because Terrell wanted a platform, including at the United Nations, where she could defend black women like Rosa Lee Ingram who were condemned by the criminal justice system for defending themselves against white male attackers. Terrell also chaired the CRC’s direct-action campaign of the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws. She was a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Thompson’s Restaurant, and won her U.S. Supreme Court case in 1953, just a year before she died. The combination of direct-action picketing and boycotting as well as a legal case led to the desegregation of Washington, D.C. restaurants and stores.