Mary Church Terrell vs. Thomas Nelson Page: Gender, Race, and Class in Anti-Lynching Rhetoric

Examining the exchange between Thomas Nelson Page and Mary Church Terrell about lynching in the 1904 North American Review, this essay considers how her ideological position, which emerged from her gender, race, and class, shaped her response. Although these factors enabled her response and built identification with her audience, the essay argues that they created a "trained incapacity" that led her to reaffirm damaging racial stereotypes and to accentuate class cleavages within her race. Rather than responding to Page's "scurrilous attacks on colored men," Church Terrell reinforced the prejudices she sought to dismantle.