Burroughs, Nannie Helen

Impact on the world

Her 1900 address 'How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping,' delivered at the National Baptist Convention's annual meeting, directly catalyzed the formation of the Woman's Convention Auxiliary, which grew under her leadership into the largest Black women's organization in the United States with over a million members by 1907; in 1909, at just 26 years old, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C., built around what she called the 'three B's,' Bible, bath, and broom, combining moral and religious instruction with vocational training in trades ranging from printing and bookkeeping to dressmaking, growing the school from 31 students to more than 2,000 over her lifetime as its principal.

Life & background

Born in Orange, Virginia to two formerly enslaved parents, Burroughs moved to Washington, D.C. with her mother and aunt at age five seeking better educational and economic opportunities, graduating with honors from the city's M Street High School, where she encountered and was mentored by fellow educators Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell. Despite scoring well on a civil service examination, she was told no government positions existed for what officials termed 'colored girls,' an experience of blocked opportunity that sharpened her lifelong focus on Black women's economic self-sufficiency; she worked instead as a secretary in Philadelphia and then for the National Baptist Convention's Foreign Mission Board in Louisville, where by 21 she had already organized a women's industrial club offering evening vocational classes. Her landmark 1900 speech to the National Baptist Convention directly led to the founding of the Woman's Convention Auxiliary, which she served first as corresponding secretary for nearly five decades and then as president until her death, building it into an organization representing over a million Black Baptist women nationwide and a vehicle through which they organized around religious, political, and social concerns largely excluded from male-dominated church leadership. In 1909 she opened the National Training School for Women and Girls on a small farmhouse and six acres of land, funded substantially by the National Baptist Convention, deliberately training an all-female, college-educated faculty and defending the school's vocational focus against critics, including male leaders who saw it as a threat to their traditional breadwinner role and others who dismissed it as merely training servants; one contemporary editorial countered that Burroughs prepared girls not for servitude but for service. She remained the school's principal until her 1961 death, simultaneously serving on the boards of organizations including the National Association of Colored Women and the National Association of Wage Earners, which she co-founded with Mary McLeod Bethune, writing extensively in support of women's suffrage as a tool for Black women's protection, and personally mentoring a young Martin Luther King Jr., to whom she continued sending letters of support and prayer throughout his rise to national prominence, including after he was stabbed in 1958.

Sources

1. Stanford Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute; Library of Congress (Inside Adams blog); EBSCO Research Starters; Encyclopedia.com; National Park Service; Boundary Stones (WETA)