Nannie

Our research team first encountered this woman in a front-page article in the Washington Bee (circa 1910), Washington D.C.'s premiere black newspaper of the time. She was a beautiful, finely dressed woman with regal, ebony skin. The article was about her school for colored girls. Therein, she also spoke about her lack of acceptance within black elite social circles despite her numerous accomplishments. We wondered if her beautiful dark skin had anything to do with that. We also wondered whether someone who valued education and social activism with such grace and beauty would have associated with the burgeoning group of Delta girls that had recently formed at nearby Howard University. Much to our delight, in a Howard Journal a few years later, her name reappeared atop a list of new intiates of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority as "Nellie Helen Burroughs Honorary Member."

Nannie called her School the School of the "Three Bs' the Bible, The Bath, and The Broom." In 1907, with the support of the National Baptist Convention, Miss Burroughs began plans for the National Trade and Professional school for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C. Under the motto, "We specialize in the wholly impossible," Miss Burroughs opened the school in 1909. Her curriculum emphasized practical and professional skills. She believed in an industrial and classical education for all her students. As a result she drew many important visitors to the school, namely, Booker T. Washington, a personal friend.

Many years earlier, she was denied a teaching position with the public school system. She remarked that she dreamed of a school that "would give all sorts of girls a fair chance." She attended the famed M Street School, where Edna Brown Coleman and Eliza Shippen later attended. There she studied business and domestic science and graduated with honors in 1896. In 1907 she received an honorary M.A. degree from Eckstein-Norton University in Kentucky. She became an accomplished writer and editor and also served as President of the Women's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention.