Nannie Helen Burroughs: Educator, Orator, Religious Leader, and Businesswoman

Posted on 17. Jun, 2010 by Leshell Hatley in Education, Education, Scholarly Celebrations

Nannie Helen Burroughs 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. This address dealt with the oppression that the black women of the early twentieth century were feeling because of the treatment from the black men. She also wrote The 12 Things The Negro Must Do For Himself was a booklet sold in the early 1900′s. The retail price for this booklet was 10 cents.

Early Life

Nannie Helen Burroughs was born on May 2, 1879, in Orange, Virginia. 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 five, she and her younger sister were brought to Washington, D.C. by their mother in pursuit of a better education.

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.

Career

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, Pa.

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 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. 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.

Burroughs died in Washington D.C. on May 20, 1961. A street in the Deanwood neighborhood of the city, Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE, is named after her.

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Tags: Eckstein-Norton University, honorary M.A. degree from Eckstein-Norton University in Kentucky in 1907, honors in business and domestic science from the Colored High School on M Street, John and Jennie Burroughs, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Nannie Helen Burroughs School, National Association of Colored Women, National Baptist Convention, National Historic Landmark, teaching African-American history and culture through a required course in the Department of Negro History, The 12 Things The Negro Must Do For Himself