Johnson(1967), and The Other Toussaint: A Post-
Revolutionary Black(1981).
Bibliography
Tarry, Ellen. The Third Door: The Autobiography of an
American Negro Woman.1955; reprint, Westport,
Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1971.
Temple, John
One of the pseudonyms that writer GEORGIA
DOUGLASJOHNSONused during her career. She
used the name when she submitted her prizewin-
ning play PLUMESto the 1927 OPPORTUNITYliter-
ary contest.
Tenderloin District
The NEW YORK CITY district located in mid-
Manhattan near Pennsylvania Station. Also known
as Herald Square, the area was home to a signifi-
cant African-American community that developed
in the early 1900s. Many of the residents were part
of the large-scale African-American migration to
the North that occurred during the Harlem Renais-
sance era, between World Wars I and II.
Terrell, Mary Eliza Church (1863–1954)
An influential activist and outspoken civic leader
who was especially well known for her leadership
in the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLORED
WOMEN(NACW) and the NATIONALASSOCI-
ATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE(NAACP).
Born into a southern family of interracial her-
itage, Terrell was raised in Memphis, Tennessee.
She was the first child born to Robert and Louisa
Church, both of whom had been enslaved in the
South. Robert Church was the son of his slave
owner, Charles Church. Terrell’s parents’ industri-
ous and successful entrepreneurial efforts provided
the family with many material comforts and social
advantages. By the 1880s, Robert Church, whose
estate was valued at close to $1 million, reportedly
was the richest African-American in the South.
Terrell went on to attend Oberlin College and
graduated in 1884. Despite her father’s wishes
that she not pursue a professional life, Terrell
began teaching. After a stint at WILBERFORCE
UNIVERSITYin Ohio, she relocated to WASHING-
TON, D.C., and began teaching at the Colored
High School. She met Robert Terrell, a HOWARD
UNIVERSITY–educated teacher and principal of the
M Street High School, who later became an influ-
ential municipal judge. The couple married in- Their only child, Phyllis, was born in 1898.
In 1905 the adoption of Terrell’s niece, named Ter-
rell Church, expanded the family.
Terrell’s accomplishments as a highly re-
spected public figure, women’s advocate, and race
woman grew out of her work with the NACW in
the early 1900s. She was one of the cofounders of
the NAACP and enthusiastically accepted the in-
vitation of W. E. B. DUBOISto become one of the
organization’s charter members. During the
Harlem Renaissance, Terrell continued to lobby for
equal rights, was a forceful antilynching activist,
and challenged many of the segregation practices
in Washington, D.C., businesses and organizations.
Terrell’s only book, A COLOREDWOMAN IN A
WHITEWORLD(1940), appeared as the Harlem
Renaissance drew to a close. Her autobiography,
which included a preface by writer H. G. Wells,
was an invaluable record of achievement and per-
severance.
She died in July 1954, shortly after the U.S.
Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of
Educationcase. She was buried in Lincoln Memo-
rial Cemetery.
Bibliography
Jones, Beverly Washington. Quest for Equality: The Life
and Writings of Mary Church Terrell.Brooklyn, N.Y.:
Carlson Publishers, 1990.
Sterling, Dorothy. Black Foremothers: Three Lives.New
York: Feminist Press, 1988.
Terrell, Mary Church. A Colored Woman in a White
World.1940; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1980.Their Eyes Were Watching GodZora Neale
Hurston(1937)
The most celebrated and well known of ZORA
NEALEHURSTON’s novels. The novel, which was
underestimated and disregarded when it was first
published, is hailed now as a seminal work of
American literature, a definitive text of theTheir Eyes Were Watching God 509