Nannie Helen Burroughs - Civil Rights Contribution

Nannie Helen Burroughs: 'The Black Goddess of Liberty'

Author(s): Sharon Harley

Source: The Journal of Negro History , Winter - Autumn, 1996, Vol. 81, No. 1/4, Vindicating the Race: Contributions to African-American Intellectual History (Winter - Autumn, 1996), pp. 62-71

Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2717608

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NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS: 'THE BLACK GODDESS OF LIBERTY'1

By

Sharon Harley*

As an educator, institution and organization-builder, and major figure in the black church and secular feminist movements, Nannie Helen Burroughs was one of the best known and well-respected African-Americans of the early twentieth century. Yet, ex- cept for a few biographical entries and an essay or two, she is absent from most con- temporary studies of African-American leaders and intellectuals. Quite possibly had she discussed her life and writings in an autobiographical work or had she been male, she would be more widely known to historians and, thus, to more black folk today. Her popularity during her lifetime and the availability of her manuscript collection at the Library of Congress should have afforded her a more central role in subsequent histories of African-American life in the twentieth century. How was it possible for a woman, who was a major figure on the black political, economic, and social landscape for the first six decades of this century, and whose views foretold some of the most compelling intellectual and ideological debates of the last four decades, not to have been given fuller consideration by scholars? Why is it that she is not more widely known by most Americans, let alone, African-Americans? To tell the story of Nannie Helen Burroughs' life as an intellectual is also to reveal how members of black com- munities and external forces and groups designate who were the black intellectuals and race leaders, and how class, gender, and even skin color influence leadership des- ignations at specific historical moments.

In her life and writings Burroughs both embodied and commented upon many of the class, race, and gender tensions confronting members of the black community in the first half of the twentieth century. Some of these tensions continue to haunt us to- day in no small order because we either did not heed or were largely unaware of Bur- roughs' voice, which was too often drowned out (and, more recently, silenced) by our preoccupation with the lives and thoughts of a few notable twentieth century middle- class male figures, such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, (more recently) Marcus Garvey, and occasionally such female notables as Ida Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell. To be marginalized in this way is quite ironic, considering that her ideas and public life were an eclectic mix of Washington (she was sometimes referred to as "Mrs. Booker T. Washington"), Du Bois, and Garvey. Moreover, she exhibited the courage and principled positions of Wells-Barnett, including her style of hard- hitting criticisms. Like Terrell, who headed a major women's organization, the Na- tional Association of Colored Women (NACW), Burroughs became president of the

* Sharon Harley is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, Maryland.

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THE BLACK GODDESS OF LIBERTY 63

much larger Women's Convention (WC) Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention.2

Burroughs' belief in the dignity of manual labor, her strong feminist stance, and in- sistence on recognizing the poorer, working class African-Americans as important agents of racial uplift in fact may have contributed to her marginalization as an intel- lectual. In her personal and ideological identification with the black working class, Nannie Helen Burroughs resembled the early twentieth century black community leader Harry Haywood. In her outspoken militant defense of the black race, particu- larly black women, the race conscious Burroughs (like Haywood and writer James Baldwin), was committed to "telling the truth" about the "wrong doings" of white folk and, in her case, about the "white thinking" of members of her own race.3 It may not have been possible for those who have written about African-American intel- lectuals to include a woman who was not a college graduate and who so strongly identified with the black working-class. Consistently, she declared: "I swear by my plain people. There are none like them . . . 'nowhere in this country is the situation of the colored man in America more clearly recognized and soundly analyzed than in the homes of the humblest.' "4

This essay is as much an examination of Burroughs' personal ideology as it is an analysis of the forces that have prevented her from figuring more prominently in sto- ries and histories of African-American intellectuals and leaders. It is a story of a wo- man whose life not only routinely intersected both middle and working class social and church circles, but whose ideas and personal identity consistently linked her with the African-American working class. Is it possible that Burroughs' intellectual work has been marginalized in the same way and for many of the same reasons historian Robin D. G. Kelley writes that "aspects of black working-class life and politics . . . have been relegated to the margins"? 5

Born on May 2, 1879 in Orange, Virginia to Jennie and John Burroughs, Nannie Helen Burroughs grew up in Washington, D.C. Her mother, a former slave, brought Nannie and her younger sister (who died in childhood) to Washington in search of a better job and the educational opportunities the city offered to blacks. Her father never joined them, preferring instead the life of the itinerant preacher. Recognizing the inde- pendent struggle her mother waged to provide for her children, with occasional assis- tance from her mother's sister, Burroughs greatly respected her mother's strength and the courage she exhibited throughout her life. These childhood experiences undoubt- edly influenced Burroughs' beliefs about the importance of women having work- related skills and financial independence whenever possible.6

Privileged to attend and graduate from Washington's Colored High School, one of the nation's best high schools for black youth, Burroughs counted among her teachers some of the most prominent black club women and educators of the early twentieth century, including Dr. Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell. She had hoped to join these and other distinguished blacks as a teaching assistant in the colored public schools of Washington, D.C., but according to L. H. Hammond, "the position was given, however, to some one else, who, it was rumored, had 'pull' with the authori- ties."7 Despite and more likely because of her failure to join these women in the D.C. public schools, their paths crossed years later when Burroughs became president of the National Training School for Women and Girls and a major figure in the black wo-

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64 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

men's secular and church club movements. Out of the great disappointment of not se- curing this position as promised, Burroughs vowed that: "I would some day have a school here in Washington that politics had nothing to do with, and that would give all sorts of girls a fair chance and help them overcome whatever handicaps they might have."8 Indeed, it is as an advocate of black women's causes, especially the poorer working class, that we encounter Burroughs' intellectual concerns on a wide range of issues.9

Prominent in white and black middle-class reform circles, nonetheless, Burroughs' background, lifestyle, religion, and ideology situated her more firmly among the masses of "ordinary" black folk. Seldom concerned about conservative black male or middle-class sensibilities in general, Burroughs articulated militant positions on most issues and, in so doing, predated some of the more radical stances taken by civil rights and black power activists during the late 1960s and the 1970s. While she com- mented on a range of issues, in this paper I will focus on the three important themes that seem to best reflect Burroughs' life experiences and ideas: the dignity of women's labor, black feminist ideology, and race pride.

"Support Thyself': The Dignity of Woman's Labor

The "valorization of work," all work, was the foundation of Nannie Helen Bur- roughs' active public and intellectual life. Burroughs' vision of a training school for women and girls, which was adopted and supported by the Women's Convention of the National Baptist Convention, grew out of her long-term belief in the value of work and the need to improve the employability of black women.

Raised primarily by her mother, Burroughs was personally attuned to the financial advantages of paid labor, especially for single women. However, the significance of productive work was connected in Burroughs' mind more with Christian duty and ra- cial self-help than with pure financial gain. In keeping with her belief that work was next to godliness, Burroughs claimed in the August 1903 issue of the National Baptist Union that "An idle woman is seldom a virtuous woman."10

In her book, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (1993), historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham situates the valori- zation of work as a central component of the politics and discourse of respectability as envisioned by Burroughs and most black Baptist women. On this point, Higginbotham concluded:

The rhetoric of the WC extolled all forms of honest labor, no matter how menial, and in the dis-

course of respectability admonished: "Don't be idle. Don't scorn labor nor look with contempt upon

the laborer. Those who encourage Negro women to loaf, rather than work at service for a living are enemies to the race.""

Professionalizing domestic work reflected Burroughs' two-fold mission: to enhance the employability of African-American women whose job options fell primarily in this category and, as Higginbotham writes, "to re-define and re-present black women's work identities as skilled workers rather than incompetent menials."'2 This re- definition was a central aspect of the discourse of respectability articulated by Bur- roughs and other Baptist women.

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THE BLACK GODDESS OF LIBERTY 65

As a pragmatic thinker and educator, Burroughs constantly sought ways of taking people where they were (i.e., recognizing their realities) and of helping them to im- prove upon their situation. Accepting the fact that domestic service work was a reality for the vast majority of African-American women, Burroughs set out to enhance their employment opportunities, wages and, most especially, their image in the white and black communities. In keeping with what Higginbotham claims is Burroughs' "ideal- izing the real" philosophy, Burroughs exclaimed: "Until we realize our ideal, we are going to idealize our real." In Burroughs' mind, there was no reason for not putting forth the best effort regardless of one's circumstances or her school's meager re- sources. Thus, she asserted:

We may have the poorest, but we are going to do the best that can be done with what we have. Our

table linen will be as white as that used in the Executive Mansion. If we eat out of tin plates and

drink from tip cups, they will be as clean and shining as the finest china and cut glass, and we will

serve with as much grace as those who have the best.13

In Burroughs' thinking there was no job too small or menial to perform efficiently and professionally. Students at the National Training School were urged to do "ordi- nary things in an extraordinary way," and by doing so, they would secure a niche in the labor market. According to Burroughs, as each of her students was so well-trained, "no one can really fill the place quite as satisfactorily and uniquely as she can fill it."'4 Burroughs' focus on student excellence was also a two-way street, in that she re- quired employers to treat their workers with respect, including providing them with adequate living accommodations. She declared that "first-class help must have first- class treatment." 15

Among educated women before Burroughs, there had been little emphasis on "professionalizing" domestic work. The culmination of many of Burroughs' ideas about work, female respectability, and racial self-help were embodied in the founding and development of the National Training School for Women and Girls. With the es- tablishment in October, 1909 of this school for black women and girls of all denomi- nations (not solely for Baptist girls as some had proposed) in the nation's capital, Bur- roughs' long-held dream became a reality. Burroughs's school, and the many women and men who supported it, sought to combat the unfair and racist characterization of black women as incompetent, lazy, and immoral.

Twenty years after the school began on a "rugged clay hill," eight buildings stood on "eight acres (worth an estimated $225,000)." By 1929, the school reportedly en- rolled 102 students and had eight teachers along with four assistants and staff mem- bers. In honor of Burroughs' unrelenting work on behalf of the school, it was com- monly called the "Nannie Burroughs' school."16

The school's motto "Work. Support thyself. To thine own powers appeal" reflected the Burroughs philosophy as well as the working women and men who comprised the majority of the black Baptist convention. The focus on improving the work skills of female students, and thus their earning power, was not viewed by Burroughs and her supporters in terms of individual accomplishment, but within the communal ethos and collective spirit that undergirded the school's emphasis. Specifically, it was felt that a more efficient, professionally-trained woman worker would reflect positively on black working women as a group, indeed, on the entire race. Moreover, a woman's wages

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66 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

were primarily not her own, but were viewed in terms of providing support to more needy relatives, non-kin, and community organizations and institutions. In addition, work as envisioned by Burroughs and others extended beyond income-producing labor to include "race work." Burroughs and the women of the Baptist women's auxiliary expected women, men, and even children to engage in productive activities that would ultimately be beneficial to "the race."17 As a supporter of the capitalist system, Burroughs did not join her intellectual ally

Harry Haywood as a member of the Communist Party. Yet, she and Haywood sought to empower and advance the black working class through various organizational and intellectual avenues. Beyond her work as school president and a member of the Na- tional Association of Colored Women, and the National League of Republican Colored Women, Burroughs helped to form the National Association of Wage Earners to ad- dress the labor interests of black women. Under Burroughs' presidency, this short- lived association in the 1920s sought to work in collaboration with capitalists for the mutual advancement of workers and employers. As Evelyn Higginbotham observed, this association was more reformist than trade unionist, and reflected Burroughs' "subjective viewpoint [rather] than any economic understanding of productive relations."'8

In her speeches, articles, and public activism, it is clear that the importance of wo- men working for wages was a central element in Burroughs' thinking about women's issues. Inlaid in the cornerstone of the National Training School for Women and Girls were the ideas and vision that not only led to the establishment of the school, but also to the founding of organizations and activities that firmly established Burroughs as one of the nation's leading feminist theorists during her lifetime and today.

"Glorified Womanhood" and Black Feminist Ideology

Nannie Burroughs' admiration for the mother who raised her without either the presence or assistance of her father led her to respect deeply the courage and strength of the poorer black working class, especially the women. Early on, she urged women to do and think for themselves in the church, home, and community at large and to take pride in their work. In turn, she implored members of the black community, espe- cially black males, to "Stop making slaves and servants of our women. We've got to stop singing-'Nobody works but father.' "19

Burroughs's feminist ideology, which ranged from urging women to be trained and to support themselves to interrogating black manhood for not "glorifying" black wo- manhood, began when she was quite young. At the age of 21 Burroughs became a na- tionally known advocate of women's equality after delivering a forceful speech enti- tled "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the 1900 meeting of the National Baptist Convention. It was at this meeting that black Baptist women formed the Women's Convention, Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention, and Nannie Helen Burroughs was elected corresponding secretary.20

In a December 1933 speech, she urged black men to do their part in the glorifica- tion of black womanhood. She maintained that "We must have a glorified womanhood that can look any man in the face - white, red, yellow, brown, or black - and tell

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THE BLACK GODDESS OF LIBERTY 67

of the nobility of character within black womanhood."21 In supporting her "glorified womanhood" position, Burroughs often spoke in broad generalizations and clearly ex- aggerated the roles of African-American women, often playing down those of African- American men. She declared, for instance, that "the Negro mother is doing it all. The women are carrying the burden"... because the men "lack manhood and energy." Burroughs claimed, "they [the men] sing too much, 'I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby.' " But she made it clear that "the women can't build homes, rear fami- lies off of love alone. The men ought to get down on their knees to Negro women."22 The apparent absence of public challenges to Burroughs' criticism may be attributed to the fact that black men and women shared her view that black men needed to do

more to defend the women of the race and because, as historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn has written, black men "could not afford to alienate the women of the race." Bur-

roughs apparently was less concerned with alienating black men than "telling the truth. "23

Race Pride: "Stop Playing White Even on Stage"

While Burroughs' emphasis on industrial education led some to dub her the "Mrs. Booker T. Washington," her ideas about race and racial pride were more closely iden- tified with the black nationalist thinking of Marcus Garvey. In an essay entitled "With All Thy Getting" in a 1927 issue of the Southern Workman, she urged blacks not to get caught up in the "ungodly" race for material rewards, but to focus on what they can best offer America - "spiritual salvation." Burroughs proclaimed:

When the Negro learns what manner of man he is spiritually, he will wake up all over. He will stop playing white even on the stage....He will glorify the beauty of his own brown skin. He will stop

thinking white and go to thinking straight and living right ....

He will realize that wrong-reaching, and wrong-bleaching and wrong-mixing have "most nigh ruin't

him" and he will redeem his body and rescue his soul from the bondage of that death...1 believe it

is the Negro's sacred duty to spiritualize American life and popularize his color instead of worship- ping the color (or lack of color) of another race.24

Not one to mince words, Burroughs often employed the language and tone that came to be associated with the "black power" advocates of the 1960s and 1970s. In a 1904 essay, "Not Color But Character," Burroughs condemned blacks who "have colorphobia as badly as the white folk have Negrophobia" as reflected in their "wholesale bleaching of faces and straightening of hair....What every woman who bleaches and straightens out needs, is not her appearance changed, but her mind."25

Regarding the tendency to associate skin color with morality, Burroughs offered the following observation.

The fairer some Negroes are, the better they think themselves, without any thought, o[r] an ounce of

character to go along with it, and enough good common sense to know that color is no badge of su-

periority of mind nor soul....[S]ome black man...would marry the most debased woman, whose only

stock in trade is her color, in preference to the most royal queen in ebony....There is character in ebony as well as in marble.26

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68 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

In criticizing the skin color consciousness (i.e., the preference among some blacks for "white faces and straight hair"), Burroughs undoubtedly made many of the fairer- skinned members of the "talented tenth" as uncomfortable as the militant black na-

tionalist Marcus Garvey. In 1933 in a well publicized speech Burroughs offered the following suggestion:

Chloroform your 'Uncle Toms' . . . The Negro must unload the leeches and parasitic leaders who

are absolutely eating the life out of the struggling, desiring mass of people. ... I don't care whether

they are in the church as the preacher, in the school as the teacher, [or] in the ward as

politicians. .. 27

Glorifying the race did not represent just a goal in and of itself, but a means to rally African-Americans to the struggle for racial justice. In the speech mentioned above Burroughs asserted that "The Negro must serve notice to the world that he is ready to die for justice. To struggle and battle and overcome and absolutely defeat every force designed against us is the only way to achieve." She believed that "The Negro is oppressed not because he is a Negro-but because he'll take it. Negroes forget your color. Stop apologizing for not being white and rank you[r] race."28

The prevalence of color prejudice within the black community was not a mere intel- lectual abstraction, but something with which she had firsthand experience. Burroughs related a story of having been overlooked by a group of women who came to meet her at a train station in Texas, although they had stared her directly in the face. After apologizing for having overlooked her, a short time later Burroughs overheard one member of the welcoming committee whisper to another, "Why, we saw that woman, but I was expecting a great big yellow woman like Mrs. W . . . who was here re- cently, or like Miss T . . ."29

Despite her long-term interracial organizational affiliations, Burroughs remained a committed advocate of race pride and race vindication. When asked in 1950 about blacks who married whites, she "snorted and arose from her chair" and responded, "Just something gone, but nothing missing. Let them go.. . They should have been gone long ago."30

To help focus African-American attention on their present plight, Burroughs insisted that they become knowledgeable about past achievements and struggles of the race. Consequently, the National Training School featured a Department of Negro History which offered a mandatory course on the subject. It was reported that the annual ora- torical contests at the school, focusing on Negro achievements, had the effect of "cre- ating wide interest and a healthy familiarity with Negro history and with current events among Negroes."31 Nannie Burroughs was a life member of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and at the 1927 meeting in Pittsburgh, on a panel with Carter G. Woodson and philosopher Alain Locke, Burroughs spoke about "The Social Value of Negro History." Burroughs proclaimed the need to vindicate the race by glorifying the historical achievements and contributions of people of African descent to world history and culture.32

Burroughs' sophisticated understanding of American history and race relations led to a critical analysis of the root causes of the Harlem Riot of 1935. She linked the re- sponses of blacks to white Americans' contemporary failure in dealing with the race question to the struggles waged by the colonists that led to the American Revolution.

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THE BLACK GODDESS OF LIBERTY 69

Employing the language of the Declaration of Independence in her newspaper article, "Declaration of 1776 Is Cause of Harlem Riot," Burroughs opened with the state- ment: "Harlem did not have a 'race' riot. It had a 'human' revolt" following 'a long train of abuses.' " She further asserted that "the causes of the Harlem riot are not far

to seek. They lie buried beneath mountains of injustices done the colored man in every state and in every relationship, through years of 'patient sufferance' on his part." Going beyond employing the language of the Declaration of Independence, Burroughs suggested that the Harlem riot had been predicted by framers of the Decla- ration who observed that "uprisings would occur 'in the course of human events,' if people are denied those inalienable rights to which the 'laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them'."33

Contesting the notion that Communist propaganda had been a factor in the riot, Burroughs concluded, as did W.E.B. Du Bois and others at the time, that "America's age-old attitude on the race question is the cause of the Harlem riot." She added, "Colored folks feel that Harlem is their last stand."34

In a 1954 lecture in Memphis, TN, Burroughs told of having been asked at a con- vention of white women to address the question, "What does the black race of America want?" Burroughs responded with her vintage frankness: "We don't want your teachers, we have our teachers; we don't want your furniture, nor your clothes, we have plenty of clothes; we don't want your doctors nor your preachers; we have our doctors and our preachers...What we ask is fair play and to be let alone."35

The "combination of brains, courage, and incorruptibleness" associated with Bur- roughs garnered her tremendous support and esteem among the black masses. While NAACP Field Secretary William Pickens' assertion, that "no other person in America has so large a hold on the loyalty and esteem of the Colored masses" as Burroughs, was not substantiated in his book; her close association and identification with the

black working class was clearly evident throughout her lifetime.36 In 1959 The Afro-American newspaper awarded her an Honor Roll plaque for dis-

tinguished public service. When she died two years later at the age of eighty-two, it was estimated that more than 5,000 people attended her funeral at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. 37

In each major historical period, historians have tended to limit the designation of "black leader" to a few prominent men. Prompted by the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s and the increase in the number of feminist scholars, historians have expanded their definitions of leadership and intellectuals to encompass a larger number and broader range of individuals. While still fairly obscure in the annals of African- American intellectual history, Nannie Helen Burroughs participated in and offered a critical analysis of the major political, economic, social, religious, and woman's issues and movements of the twentieth century. The power and eloquence of hundreds of anonymous African-Americans, of formally-uneducated women and men, such as for- mer sharecroppers Fannie Lou Hamer and Nate Shaw, have only recently been recog- nized in academic and "intellectual" circles. The contemporary efforts of anthropolo- gists, sociologists, and historians to collect and present the lives and achievements of thousands of previously marginalized blacks have all aided in the reexamination of the writings, speeches, and life experiences of Nannie Helen Burroughs and many other African-American intellectual giants.

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70 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

NOTES

Description taken from Nannie Helen Burroughs, "Up from the Depths" in Roy Hill, ed., Rhetoric of Racial Hope (Buffalo, NY: University Press, State University of New York, 1976), p. 49. Following Bur- roughs' introduction as the featured speaker at the Howe Institute in Memphis, Tennessee in 1952, Bron Bones, an observer, proclaimed "Like a Black Goddess of Liberty who had come to bring messages of peace and love to her oppressed people, Miss Burroughs arose amid loud and continuous applause, standing like a statute ... she was a picture to behold."

2 One of the best contemporary books about the lives and thoughts of African-American male and female intellectuals viewed through the lens of their autobiographical works is V. P. Franklin, Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths: Autobiography and the Making of the African-American Intellectual Tradition (New York: Scribner, 1995). This publication is part of the growing recognition of autobiography as one of the most important historical and literary genre for revealing the "black self." See, for example: William L. Andrews, ed., African-American Autobiography: A Collection of Critical Essays, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993).

3 For a fuller discussion of Haywood and Baldwin's lives as vindicators of the race, see Franklin, Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths.

4 Newsclipping, The Afro-American, April 7, 1934, in Nannie Helen Burroughs Collection, Box 331, Li- brary of Congress.

5 For a brilliant account of the resistance struggles of the black working-class see Robin Kelly, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994); quote on page 4. As a spokesperson and advocate of the intellectual and racial politics of the African-American working class, Burroughs predates post-1960s scholars whose expanded definition of intellectual history came to in- clude "the history not of thought, but of men [and women] thinking." This quote from Joseph Levenson appears in the preface of Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. ix.

6 Evelyn Brooks Barnett [Higginbotham] was one of the first scholars to write about Burroughs. See her essay, "Nannie Burroughs and the Education of Black Women," in Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg- Penn, eds., The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images, (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978), pp. 97-108. In Higginbotham's, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), Burroughs is a prominent figure in the develop- ment of the women's movement in the black Baptist church. Thousands of Washington Post readers were treated to an historical comic-strip series about Burroughs and her school during the month of April, 1996. The series, entitled "We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible," was excerpted from the Flashbacks collec- tion of stories, A Cartoon History of the District of Columbia.

7 L. H. Hammond, In the Vanguard of a Race (New York: Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1922), p. 48.

8 Ibid., p. 48-49. 9 Ibid.

10 National Baptist Union, August 8, 1903 quoted in Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, p. 290. I National Baptist Convention (NBC), Fifteenth Annual Session of the WC, 1915, cited in Higginbotham,

Righteous Discontent, p. 211. 12 Ibid., p. 212. 13 NBC, Ninth Annual Session of the WC, 1909, p. 286 quoted in Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, p.

213.

14 NBC, Eleventh Annual Session of the WC, 1911, p. 47 and cf 98 from Higginbotham, Righteous Dis- content, p. 213.

15 Ibid.

16 Floyd Calvin, "That's Nannie Burroughs' Job, and She Does It," Pittsburgh Courier, June 8, 1929, cited in Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 133.

17 NBC, Ninth Annual Session of the WC, 1909, p. 276 quoted in Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, p. 211.

18 Barnett [Higginbotham], "Burroughs and the Education of Black Women," pp. 101-102.

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THE BLACK GODDESS OF LIBERTY 71

19 Ibid.; Also see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "Burroughs, Nannie Helen (1879-1961)," in Black Wo- men in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosa-

lyn Terborg-Penn (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc., 1993), pp. 201-205; and Casper LeRoy Jordan, "Nan- nie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961)," in Notable Black American Women, edited by Jessie Carney Smith (Detroit: Gale Publishing Co., 1992), pp.137-140. 20 See Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, and Encyclopedia of Black Women, p. 201. 21 The Louisiana Weekly, December 23, 1933, quoted in Lerner, Black Women in White America p. 553, 22 Ibid.

23 Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, "Black Male Perspectives on the Nineteenth-Century Woman," in The Afro- American Woman: Struggles and Images, p. 42. 24 The Southern Workman, 56 (July 1927): 299-301. 25 The Voice of the Negro, 1, (July 1904): 277-278. 26 Ibid.

27 The Louisiana Weekly, December 23, 1933 cited in Lerner, Black Women in White America, p. 551- 552.

28 Ibid., p. 552.

29 William Pickens, Nannie Burroughs and the School of the Three B's (New York: William Pickens, 1921).

30 Era Bell Thompson, "A Message from a Mahogany Blond," Negro Digest, July 1950, p. 33. 31 Calvin, "That's Nannie Burroughs," pp. 133-134. 32 See the Journal of Negro History (January 1928), cited in Evelyn Brooks Barnett, "Burroughs, Nan-

nie," Dictionary of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982), pp. 81-82.

33 "Declaration of 1776 Is Cause of Harlem Riot," The Afro-American, April 13, 1935, quoted in Lemer, Black Women in White America, pp. 408-409.

34 Ibid., pp. 409-410. 35 Burroughs, "Up from the Depths," in Roy L. Hill, Rhetoric of Racial Hope, pp. 50-51. 36 William Pickens, Nannie Burroughs, p. 29. 37 Hill, Rhetoric of Racial Hope, p. 370.

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