Nannie Helen Burroughs

Nannie Helen Burroughs

Description

This volume brings together the writings of Nannie Helen Burroughs, an educator, civil rights activist, and leading voice in the African American community during the first half of the twentieth century.

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) is just one of the many African American intellectuals whose work has long been excluded from the literary canon. In her time, Burroughs was a celebrated African American (or, in her era, a "race woman") female activist, educator, and intellectual. This book represents a landmark contribution to the African American intellectual historical project by allowing readers to experience Burroughs in her own words. This anthology of her works written between 1900 and 1959 encapsulates Burroughs's work as a theologian, philosopher, activist, educator, intellectual, and evangelist, as well as the myriad of ways that her career resisted definition. Burroughs rubbed elbows with such African American historical icons as W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, and Mary McLeod Bethune, and these interactions represent much of the existing, easily available literature on Burroughs's life. This book aims to spark a conversation surrounding Burroughs's life and work by making available her own tracts on God, sin, the intersections of church and society, black womanhood, education, and social justice. Moreover, the volume is an important piece of the growing movement toward excavating African American intellectual and philosophical thought and reformulating the literary canon to bring a diverse array of voices to the table.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Civil Rights
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Women
• América
• African American studies
• African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955?1968)
• Civil and political rights
• Woman
• African American
• The Women
• American
• Black
• Discrimination

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268105556
• Langue: English

Extrait

NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS
A FRICAN A MERICAN I NTELLECTUAL H ERITAGE S ERIES
Paul Spickard and Patrick Miller
Series Editors
NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS
A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer, 1900–1959
Edited and annotated by
KELISHA B. GRAVES
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2019 Kelisha B. Graves
Published by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Burroughs, Nannie Helen, 1879–1961, author. | Graves, Kelisha B., 1990– editor.
Title: Nannie Helen Burroughs : a documentary portrait of an early civil rights pioneer, 1900/1959 / edited and annotated by Kelisha B. Graves.
Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2019] | Series: African American intellectual heritage series | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011960 (print) | LCCN 2019012288 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268105563 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268105556 (epub) | ISBN 9780268105532 (hbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268105537 (hbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Burroughs, Nannie Helen, 1879–1961—Political and social views. | African American women civil rights workers—Biography. | African Americans--Social conditions—20th century. | African Americans—Education. | Burroughs, Nannie Helen, 1879–1961. | African American Baptists—Biography. | Educators—United States—Biography. | Conduct of life.
Classification: LCC E185.97.B95 (ebook) | LCC E185.97.B95 A25 2019 (print) | DDC 370.92 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011960
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
To my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for showing the way.

To Suzanna Shaw Wright, my maternal great-grandmother, whose shiny hands, soft knees, and adorable ebony face I will always remember.

To my parents, Kelvin and Carletta Graves, and my two sisters, Tamri and Majeste’ Graves, whose love and support are boundless.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction. “God Will Give Us Credit for Trying:” Toward an Intellectual History of Nannie Helen Burroughs
P ART O NE . Things of the Spirit: Religious Thought
Reflections on Baptist Theology, the Bible, and Paganism
What Baptists Believe
What the Bible Is and What It Does for the Human Race
Woman’s Day
Are You a Colored Baptist?
The Role of the Church in Society
Exporting Christianity and Cultivating Race Prejudice
How to Hitch Your Old Time Religion to New Conditions
The Church Began in the Home
Definite Work That Uplifters Should Do
Human Waste and Human Responsibility
P ART T WO . The Way Up and Out: Social, Political, and Race-Centered Thought
On Black Womanhood, Suffrage, and the Nobility of Labor
How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping
The Colored Woman and Her Relation to the Domestic Problem

Not Color but Character
Black Women and Reform
Miss Burroughs Plans a “New Deal” to Conserve Girlhood of the Race
Negro Women Must Make Future Brighter, or Continue an Economic, Social Slave
Negro Women and Their Homes
The Negro Woman Is a Mighty Big Woman
Uplift, Patriotism, Respectability, and Education
Industrial Education—Will It Solve the Negro Problem?
The Negro Home
With All Thy Getting
From a Woman’s Point of View
Manhood, Patriotism, Religion, Going Out of Style among Negroes
Bathing Is a Personal Right; Smelling Is a Public Offense
How Does It Feel to Be a Negro?
“Must Uplift the Masses”
The Only Way to Victory
Up from the Depths
Group Politics, Leadership, and Race Work
Go Down Town and Meet Him
Why Our Dispositions Are “Most Nigh Ruint”
Nearly All the Educated Negroes Are Looking for Ready-Made Jobs
Get Ready—Winter Is Coming, Says Educator; Leaders Idle
Educated Parasites and Satisfied Mendicants
Writer Asks How Dems Election Will Affect Negro
Unload the Leeches and Parasitic “Toms” and Take the Promised Land
Twelve Things the Negro Must Do for Himself

Racial Violence, Social Justice, Politics, and Democracy
Miss Burroughs Replies to Mr. Carrington
Divide Vote or Go to Socialists
What Is Social Equality?
Legitimate Ambitions of the Negro
Why America Has Gone Lynch Mad
Race Attitude
The Challenge of the New Day: Commencement Address, May 24, 1934
Ballot and Dollar Needed to Make Progress, Not Pity
Declaration of 1776 Is Cause of the Harlem Riot
This Is the War of the Five Rs: Race, Room, Raw Materials, Rights, Religion
Education and Justice
Put the Leaven in the Lump
Second Class Citizens
Slavery Was a Success
The Meaning of Cooperation
Brotherhood and Democracy
The Only Way to World Peace
The Path to Real Justice
The Hope of the World
Equality of Opportunity Is the Eternal Goal
We Must Fight Back, but with What and How?
Thoughts and Words toward the White World
An Appeal to the Christian White Women of the Southland
Some Early Trail Blazers in Interracial Service
The Best Way to Resent the White Man’s Insults
The Dawn of a New Day in Dixie
Twelve Things Whites Must Stop Doing

P ART T HREE . The Figure of Nannie Helen Burroughs in Popular Thought
Burroughs in Popular Thought
Saving an Idea
Lily Hardy Hammond
Evanston Hears Miss Burroughs: Educator, Club Worker Discusses What to Do with Life
Mary E. Depugh
Pointing the Way to Better Womanhood: That’s Nannie Helen Burroughs’s Job and She Does It
Floyd J. Calvin
A Message from a Mahogany Blond
Era Bell Thompson
Appendix. Chronology of the Life and Times of Nannie Helen Burroughs
Notes
Further Reading
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing this book on Nannie Helen Burroughs caused me to ponder what kind of education my great-grandmother, Susanna Shaw Wright, might have received if she had only been afforded the opportunity. She raised ten black children in the Jim Crow South. She picked cotton, occasionally sewed her children clothes from potato sacks, cooked in restaurants, and tended “white folks chirren.” Even if she didn’t know it, her labor was noble. According to my mother, my great-grandmother wanted to be a teacher. Circumstances prohibited her from fulfilling this dream. In His infinite wisdom, God thought it not robbery that I would inherit this dream to educate. I am committed to preserving the wisdom of my elders and carrying forward the tradition of black educators.
While conducting research for this project, I was moved when I saw that Nannie Helen Burroughs used the word “pa’cel” when recounting a story of her grandmother, who had been enslaved, because my great-grandmother used the same word. I immediately knew that this was black women’s layman’s term to denote “a lot of” or “many.” This was important to me because it represented the ways in which black language traditions make history more familial (and familiar) to us than we could have ever imagined. Indeed, history is familial, not ethereal.
Nannie Helen Burroughs had a big vision for her race and a special responsibility to women and girls. Her life’s mission was to create opportunities for black women in spaces where they scantily existed. It goes without saying that our nation would look remarkably different without her contribution. She gave ungrudgingly and our world is better because she lived.
The idea for this book came from the realization that the words and ideas of Nannie Helen Burroughs had slipped from view. In reflecting on her long career, it seemed unfair to me that there was no book that took up the task of understanding how she thought about the issues of her time. The sixty years she dedicated to working on behalf of the race, her zeal for social justice, her hatred for enemies of progress, and her quest to build an institution dedicated to the education and edification of black women around the globe more than justifies this project.
Ferreting through archives and conducting research can either be highly collaborative or highly isolating. This book would not have been possible without a host of friendly faces and helping hands. I am indebted to my family for their love and encouragement throughout this long process. Their confidence that this project would come to fruition never failed to provide a good boost when I needed it. I would also like to thank the exceptional staff of the Charles W. Chesnutt Library at Fayetteville State University for their kind assistance in helping me corral various research materials for this book. Specifically they are: Robert Foster, Francine Dixon (former library technician), Gloria Mills, Patricia Flanigan, and Winette Vann. I am also indebted to several academic mentors and intellectual influences. Dr. Linda Tomlinson has been an unfailing mentor since I was an undergraduate student. Her commitment to African American historical scholarship is i