What it Means to be Colored in the Capital, (10 October 1906) Washington D.C.

“What it Means to be Colored in the Capital of the United States” delivered October 10, 1906, Terrell, Mary Church. (1863-1954)

The text of Mary Church Terrell’s (=A) speech was published in The Independent in 1906. Oberlin College Archives provides access to The Independent’s speech through the Mary Church Terrell papers. This speech is located in the Mary Church Terrell Papers, Series VII, Speeches by Mary Church Terrell, RG 30/438, Box 6, the Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin, OH. The speech-text can be found online: https://ohio5.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15963coll16/id/566.

There are no audio or video recordings of the speech in the collection. We found no other available version of the speech. The transcript was recovered and transcribed by Alisa Hardy. Alisa Hardy and Skye de Saint Felix proofread the speech text for accuracy. Paragraph structure and punctuation of the document have been retained from the text provided from Oberlin College. Paragraph numbers were added in brackets. We did fix six typos where the error was obvious to allow for a more readable speech text. The number corresponds to the speech paragraph where the error occurred:

16: “Alto” became “Although”

16: Period was added at the end of the sentence to become “inaugurated.”

16: “hight” became “height”

16: “therefor” became “therefore”

19: “altho” became “although”

20: “skilful” became “skillful”