Mary Church Terrell and The Traveling Griots: Exemplars of Black Womanhood – Opening July 31, 2025 at 5:00pm
The National Women’s Hall of Fame is proud to welcome this powerful and evocative traveling exhibition.
Honoring the legacy of Hall of Fame inductee Mary Church Terrell, this exhibition brings to life the vision and valor of Terrell and her contemporaries—trailblazing African American women who shaped the course of American civil rights and women’s suffrage history.
Rooted in the West African tradition of the griot—a revered storyteller, historian, and keeper of cultural memory—this immersive installation features life-size dolls dressed in stunning period attire, each representing Terrell and her network of fellow pioneers in the struggle for equality. These women, founders of the National Association of Colored Women and leaders in the movement for racial justice and gender equity, come forth in this exhibit as modern-day griots whose wisdom, strength, and vision still speak to us today.
The exhibit is a collaborative effort between Oakwood University, the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute, and the Jonathan Green Maritime Cultural Center at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
Created by cultural historian, educator and curator Dr. Kim Cliett Long, the installation seeks to preserve, elevate and inculcate as American history, African American women’s history and heritage by embracing the griot tradition—reviving ancestral voices through artistic expression, storytelling, poetry, and visual narrative.
In Mary Church Terrell’s own words: “Lifting As We Climb.” This exhibition invites visitors to witness how that guiding principle inspired a generation of women to lift a nation.