“Something Substantial and Worthy”: Intersectionality in the French-Language Diaries of Mary Church Terrell

Before Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was a noted black clubwoman, she was Mary Eliza Church, precocious linguist and aspiring writer. In August 1888, the latter began keeping a journal to chart her progress in speaking and writing French.  Begun in Paris, France, at the beginning of Church’s extended, unchaperoned stay in Europe and concluded in Lausanne, Switzerland, the diaries record the cultural, emotional, and political growth that shaped her interest in women’s writing, prompted her eventual return to the United States, and culminated in her engagement in social activism. This paper will explore how Church, in her “racialized private text” (to borrow from literary historian Lois Brown), wrestled with the expectations and responsibilities that attended her status as an African-American bourgeoise. With startling candor, the diaries reveal that the categories of gender, race, and class cannot be viewed independently when studying Church’s young-adult life but must, as Kimberlé Crenshaw argues, be considered intersectionally. Only then can one begin to understand the apparent contradictions in the diaries, the shifts between reiterations of 19^th-century gender conventions and glimpses of 20^th-century social changes. Likewise, Church’s French-language journals suggest that the same privilege that opened up the world to her may have impeded her dreams of being a creative writer. In one of the final entries, Church writes that she “must do something substantial and worthy to merit all the rare and beneficial opportunities that the good Lord has given” her. Buffeted between respectability, responsibility, and opportunity, Church ultimately prioritized being of service to her gender and race in discernible, immediate ways and returned home after wrapping up her European sojourn with stays in Berlin and Florence. The study of “racialized private texts,” then, must extend not only across sites and genres but also across languages and social categories.