No Capital Gains

As a graduate of Oberlin College and a resident of the national capital, Mrs. Mary Church Terrell should have been eligible to join the Washington branch of the American Association of University Women. But Mary Terrell was a Negro. In 1946, Washington turned her down.

Though 83, fiery Mrs. Terrell decided to fight. "I thought I'd be an arrant coward," she said, "unless I opened the way for other colored women." She applied for membership in the national A.A.U.W. and got in; Washington was ordered to take her in or get out of the association. Instead, Washington took the case to court and won the three-year fight; under the association's national bylaws, the court said, Washington had a right to exclude anyone it chose. Last week, at its national convention in Seattle, the A.A.U.W. voted to change the bylaws and require the admission of any college alumna "regardless of race, color, creed or religion."

But that would not get Mary Terrell into the Washington chapter. As soon as the vote was counted, Washington made its decision: it seceded from the association. It was a pity, sighed the quietly disgusted New York Times, "because women with the advantage of a college degree really ought to know better, and because women representing the capital of this democracy ought at the least to act as though they believed in democracy."

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