collaboratively by the Methodist Church in Ohio and the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the state. After 2 years of teaching in Ohio, Mary moved to Washington, D.C. to accept a position in the Latin Department at the M Street School. She took a leave of absence from teaching in 1888 to travel and study in Europe for two years, where she became fluent in French, German, and Italian. Eventually, Oberlin College offered her a registrarship position in 1891 which would make her the first black women to obtain such position; however, she declined. When she married Robert "Berto" Heberton Terrell in 1891 she was forced to resign from her position at the M Street School where her new husband also taught. In 1895 she was appointed superintendent of the M Street High School, becoming the first woman to hold this post. Upon returning to the United States, Terrell shifted her attention from teaching to social activism, focusing especially on the empowerment of black women. She also wrote prolifically, including an autobiography, and her writing was published in several journals. "Lynching from a Negro's Point of View," published in 1904, is included in Terrell's long list of published work where she attempts to dismantle the skewed narrative of why black men are targeted for lynching and she presents numerous facts to support her claims. Terrell's, autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World (1940), accounts her personal experiences with racism. Activism Black women's clubs and the National Association of Colored Women In 1892, Terrell along with Helen Appo Cook, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna Julie Cooper, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Mary Jane Patterson and Evelyn Shaw formed the Colored Women's League in Washington, D.C. The goals of the service-oriented club were to promote unity, social progress and the best interests of the African American community. Cook was elected president. The Colored Women's League aided in elevating the lives of educated Black women outside of a church setting. It also started a training program and kindergarten, before these were included in the Washington, DC public schools. Combined with her achievements as a principal, the success of the League's educational initiatives led to Terrell's appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education which she held from 1895 to 1906. She was the first Black woman in the United States to hold such a position. Around the same time, another group of progressive black