Burroughs, Nannie

Educator, civil rights advocate, and religious leader, Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) was 21 years old when she gained notoriety as an advocate for equity and women's rights. At the annual conference of the National Baptist Convention in Richmond, Virginia, in 1900, she powerfully expressed the long-held frustrations of women in the Baptist Church who were made slaves by Whites and were suppressed by fellow Blacks. Burroughs's speech served as a catalyst for the formation of the Women's Convention Auxiliary, the largest women's organization in America. Her fight for social justice was fueled by what she had seen as a long-standing marginalization of Black women in both educational and religious institutions.

Burroughs was born on May 2, 1879, in Orange, Virginia, to John and Jennie Burroughs. Educated in Washington, D.C., at the Colored High School (later renamed the M Street School), it was at this school that she met Anna Julia Cooper, one of her inspirational teachers. Her dream was to open a school to educate young women, and in 1909, the National Training School for Women and Girls was founded in northeast Washington, D.C. A motto of accomplishing the impossible drove the belief and vision of the school. Burroughs, its founder, fought to prepare African-American young women for the realities of the workplace and life as Black women. Her battle was not only with racism within a white supremacist society but also with the Black male leadership of the National Baptist Conference. Over the years, the school maintained steady growth despite withdrawal of official support from the Baptist Convention over issues of Burroughs's leadership.

She adopted many of the beliefs espoused by Booker T. Washington, placing importance on the development of self-help, skill development through vocational education, and racial pride. The school's curriculum offered missionary training as well as industrial programs of study, preparing women as seamstresses, nurses, cooks, and housekeepers as well as stenographers, clerks, and bookkeepers. Burroughs was adamant in stressing the importance of history, requiring a course in Black history for every student in the training school. She maintained active involvement in the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Young women from across the country as well as Africa and the Caribbean attended the school from its inception with 31 students to its height 25 years later with more than 2,000 women matriculating at the high school and junior college levels.

For decades Burroughs supported the NAACP's battle against discrimination by advocating boycotts and petition writing, through press releases, and speeches. In the fight for justice, she was militant on both racism and sexism fronts. She collaborated with Mary McLeod Bethune, Maggie L. Walker, and other club women to organize the National Association of Wage Earners in order to attract public attention to the menial and low-paying conditions of domestic workers. The organization's nine-point program advocated broad ranging objectives, including the elevation of the migrant classes of workers; securing wages that would enable women to live decently; assembling the grievances of employers and employees into a set of common demands and striving, mutually, to adjust them; and enlightening women as to the value of organizing and influencing just legislation affecting women wage earners. Burroughs's commitment to altering the conditions of women coincided with that of many Black women educators of the day, illustrating the camaraderie and cooperation among Black women leaders who struggled together on a national basis.

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