Nannie Helen Burroughs

Nannie Helen Burroughs, by Rotograph Co., New York City, 1909.

Nannie Helen Burroughs, (May 2, 1879 – May 20, 1961) was an African American educator, orator, religious leader, and businesswoman. She gained national recognition for her 1900 speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the National Baptist Convention. She founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC in 1909. It has since been renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor and provides education for the elementary grades.

Personal life

Early life

Nannie Helen Burroughs was born on May 2, 1879, in Orange, Virginia. Her parents were John and Jennie Burroughs. They were freedmen, both ex-slaves. Her father was a farmer and itinerant Baptist preacher; her mother was a cook.

Career

Burroughs holding Woman's National Baptist Convention banner.

In 1896, Burroughs helped establish the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). In 1897, Burroughs started work as an associate editor at the Christian Banner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1900, Burroughs moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to work as a secretary for the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention. This was the national association of black Baptist churches. After the American Civil War, black congregations quickly withdrew from white-dominated churches to create churches independent of white supervision. They had a few at that time, but soon had many more. Within several years, they were setting up state Baptist associations and, by the end of the 19th century, national associations. This is still the largest black Baptist denomination.

In 1909, Burroughs founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C. After her death, in 1976 it was renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor, and has been designated a National Historic Landmark. The school emphasized preparing students for employment. Burroughs offered courses in domestic science and secretarial skills, but also in unconventional occupations such as shoe repair, barbering, and gardening. Burroughs created a creed of racial self-help through her program of the three Bs: the Bible, the bath, and the broom. The Bible, the bath, and the broom stood for a clean life, a clean body, and a clean house.

Burroughs believed domestic work should be professionalized and unionized. She trained her students to be respectable employees by becoming pious, pure, and domestic, but not submissive. She emphasized the importance of being proud black women to all students, by teaching African-American history and culture through a required course in the Department of Negro History. She became active in the National League of Republican Colored Women, and the National Association of Wage Earners, working to influence legislation related to wages for domestic workers and other positions held by women.

In 1931, the Herbert Hoover administration appointed her as committee chairwomen concerning Negro Housing, for his White House Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership. This was in the early years of the Great Depression.

Burroughs died in Washington, D.C. on May 20, 1961.

Legacy and honors

• 1907, she received an honorary M.A. from Eckstein Norton University, a historically black college in Cane Spring, Bullitt County, Kentucky. (It merged with Simpson University in 1912.)
• 1976, the school she founded in Washington, DC was named after her.
• Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE, a street in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, DC, is named after her.
• The Burroughs Collection of papers is held by the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. It consists of 110,000 items (1900–1963); bulk (1928–60), which also contains material concerning her activities with the National Baptist Convention, National League of Republican Colored Women, and National Association of Wage Earners.
• In 1997 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.