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

Nannie Helen Burroughs, (May 2, 1879 – May 20, 1961) was an influential African American educator, orator, religious leader and businesswoman. She gained national recognition from her 1900 speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping." at the National Baptist Convention.

Personal life

Early life

Nannie Helen Burroughs was born May 2nd, 1879, in Orange, Virginia.^[1] Her parents were John and Jennie Burroughs. They were both ex-slaves. Her father was a farmer and itinerant Baptist preacher, her mother was a cook.

After the death of her father when Nannie was 5, she and her younger sister were brought to Washington, D.C. by their mother in pursuit of a better education.^[2]

Education

In 1896 Nannie graduated with honors in business and domestic science from the Colored High School on M street (now Dunbar High School).

She received an honorary M.A. degree from Eckstein-Norton University in Kentucky in 1907.^[3]

Career

Burroughs' holding Woman's National Baptist Convention banner.

In 1896, Burroughs helped establish the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).

In 1900, Burroughs moved to Louisville, Kentucky to work as a secretary for the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention.

In 1909, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., which was renamed in her honor the Nannie Helen Burroughs School after her death and is 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 b’s-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. She believed domestic work should be professionalized and even unionized. Burroughs trained her students to become 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.^[4]

Later life and death

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

References

1. ^ Library of Congress Live, November 20, 2003
2. ^ Library of Congress, American Memory, American Women
3. ^ A brief note on the lives of Anna Julia Cooper & Nannie Helen Burroughs: Profiles of African Women educators. Runoko Rashidi & Karen A. Johnson. 1998 (revised December 19, 1999) online edition accessed on December 18, 2007.
4. ^ A true Girl-Friend, Nannie Burroughs.

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Nannie Helen Burroughs