Burroughs, Nannie Helen (c. 1878–1961)

African-American educator and school founder. Born in Orange, Virginia, on May 2, around 1878; died in Washington, D.C., in May 1961; older of two daughters of John (a farmer and preacher) and Jennie (Poindexter) Burroughs; attended M Street High School, Washington; awarded honorary A.M. from Eckstein-Norton University, Kentucky, 1907.

"The training of Negro women is absolutely necessary," said Nannie Burroughs at the Women's Convention of National Baptists in 1902, "not only for their own salvation and the salvation of the race, but because the hour in which we live demands it. If we lose sight of the demands of the hour we blight our hope of progress." Acting on her own words, Burroughs built a school and educated thousands of young black women in her lifetime.

The daughter of ex-slaves, Nannie Burroughs moved to Washington, D.C., with her widowed mother when she was five. While her mother worked as a cook, Burroughs attended public school, graduating from the M Street High School with honors in 1896. Unable to obtain a job as a domestic-science teacher in the District of Columbia public-school system, Burroughs worked at various jobs before finding employment as a secretary for the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention, in Louisville, Kentucky. In her spare time, she organized the Woman's Industrial Club, which, in addition to offering moderately priced lunches to office workers in the area, held evening classes in typing, shorthand, bookkeeping, and sewing for members. The night courses grew so popular that Burroughs finally hired teachers, leaving her free to supervise the operation.

In 1900, Burroughs attracted favorable attention at the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention with a stirring speech entitled "Hindered from Helping" and was subsequently elected secretary of the National Baptist Woman's Convention, the newly formed auxiliary to the men's convention. Burroughs became a driving force within the organization (whose goal was to reinforce Christianity in the United States and ultimately to Christianize the world), especially as an inspirational speaker. Serving as secretary of the auxiliary until 1948 when she became president, Burroughs helped build the organization from the ground up.

The Baptist women eventually backed Burroughs' dream of establishing a school for young black women. In 1909, with seven students, she opened the Training School for Women and Girls located on a six-acre campus in suburban Washington. Like Mary McLeod Bethune before her, Burroughs spent the rest of her life administering to, and raising money to sustain, the enterprise. By the end of its first year, the school had 31 students; 25 years later, the enrollment exceeded 2,000 women from the U.S., Africa, and the Caribbean Basin. In 1934, her school was named the National Trades and Professional School for Women.

Based on the three b's—the Bible, the bath, and the broom—Burroughs' educational philosophy was centered on Puritan ethic but also encompassed an innovative curriculum. She believed that black women could become self-sufficient wage earners. Thus, in addition to domestic arts and secretarial skills, she offered courses in unconventional occupations for women such as shoe repair, printing, barbering, and gardening. Vocational training was supplemented with classical academics, with emphasis on grammar and language. One of the most unique aspects of the school was its Department of Negro History established by Burroughs to instill a sense of racial pride in her students.

Burroughs was also an active participant in the club movement among black women during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1896, she was a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women, a federation of more than 100 local women's clubs. She also founded the National Association of Wage Earners and served as its president. During the Depression, Burroughs organized a cooperative in northeast

Washington (later called Cooperative Industries, Inc.), which provided facilities for a variety of services, including a medical clinic and variety store.

Sought after as a speaker and writer, Burroughs promoted her belief in self-help and self-reliance for blacks. In an article for Southern Workman (July 1927), she encouraged self-pride: "No race is richer in soul quality and color than the Negro. Some day he will realize it and glorify them. He will popularize black." She was also outspoken in her feelings about the treatment of black women by black men, writing in a 1933 column of a black publication: "Stop making slaves and servants of our women…. The Negro mother is doing it all. The women are carrying the burden. The main reason is that the men lack manhood and energy…. [T]he men ought to get down on their knees to the Negro women. They've made possible all we have."

A champion of suffrage, Burroughs worked to register women after the vote was won in 1920 and remained devoted to the Baptist Women's Convention for more than a half century. It was through her school, however, with its motto of optimism—"We specialize in the wholly impossible"—that Burroughs dream was achieved. After her death from a stroke in 1961, the school was renamed the Nannie Burroughs School.

sources:

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.

Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. Notable Black American Women. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1992.

Barbara Morgan , Melrose, Massachusetts