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------------------------------------------------------------ Outline view: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms003010 ------------------------------------------------------------
Scope and Content NoteThe papers of Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) span the years 1900-1978, with most of the material concentrated between the years 1928 and 1960. The collection consists of correspondence, financial records, memoranda, notebooks, speeches and writings, subscriptions and orders, student records, and printed matter. On 19 October 1909, the National Training School for Women and Girls opened with Nannie Burroughs as its first president. Burrough's goal had been to have a school train young African-American women without regard for social status or political loyalties. Although she had experienced success with an evening school for training women for domestic service in Louisville during her years with the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention, Burroughs still pursued her dream of establishing a national school. She presented her idea for the school at the meeting of Baptist women in Richmond in 1900 at which the Woman's Convention Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention was formed. She was elected corresponding secretary of the new organization, and from 1900 she labored for the acceptance and success of the separate Woman's Convention while continuing to advocate that it sponsor a training school. Finally in 1906 a committee named by the Woman's Convention settled upon Washington, D.C., as the location for the school, and in 1907 Nannie H. Burroughs and two other members of the committee made the down payment on the $6,500 purchase price of a six-acre farm with an eight-room house that became the National Training School for Women and Girls, later renamed the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls. The years of service which Burroughs devoted to the Woman's Convention and the National Trade and Professional School are documented throughout her papers. There is little in the collection relating to her family and no letters concerning her private life. Most of the letters in the General Correspondence series relate to maintaining and operating the school or deal with the activities and internal affairs of the Woman's Convention. The recurring controversy with the National Baptist Convention over the legal status of the school received considerable attention until it was resolved following Burroughs's election as president of the Woman's Convention in 1948. Other letters reflect her point of view with regard to education, the role of the church, and the economic, social, and political positions of African Americans. Some of these concerns are emphasized in correspondence concerning the National League of Republican Colored Women, in the exchange of letters with service-oriented organizations, such as the National Association of Wage Earners, and in communications from other national committees, including the 1932 Committee on Negro Housing of the President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership. Additional subjects discussed in the correspondence are Burroughs's illnesses, activities, former students, local and state missionary societies, articles written by Burroughs, missionary activities in Africa, operation of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association, and invitations to speak before church, college, civic, and social groups. The General Correspondence has been separated into letters received and letters sent in order to facilitate the microfilming of carbon copies of letters sent by Burroughs, most of which are on newsprint that has deteriorated and become brittle. Often acknowledged as the female Booker T. Washington, Nannie Burroughs was acclaimed by many as a great orator. Accounts describing her ability to arouse and sway an audience are found in newspaper articles and in letters in the General Correspondence. However, only a few of her speeches have survived. Two in the collection are addresses she delivered in support of Republican candidates in the election campaigns of 1928 and 1932. Throughout her life, Burroughs was outspoken on issues she considered vital to black interests, and she contributed articles to leading African-American newspapers and magazines. Although these articles generally attacked the injustices endured by blacks, they also exhorted and challenged blacks to assume responsibility for changing their own conditions. Her report on the treatment of black Gold Star Mothers refuted some of the rumors circulating among blacks regarding the preferential treatment accorded white Gold Star Mothers. But like the speeches, only a few articles can be found in her papers. Burroughs also wrote several plays. A revised edition of The Slabtown District Convention, which enjoyed popularity during the 1920s and 1930s, and successive drafts of "When Truth Gets a Hearing," a pageant presented in various cities to raise funds, are included in the Speeches and Writings series. The Administrative and Financial File is the most diverse of the series in the Burroughs Papers. In addition to the personal financial affairs of Burroughs and the financial records of the Women's Convention and the National Trade and Professional School, this series includes the records of Cooperative Industries, a self-help cooperative serving approximately six-thousand people in far northeast Washington between 1934 and 1938. Also in the series are fragmentary records of the National Association of Wage Earners, which Burroughs was instrumental in forming to train people in service-related jobs, and a few financial documents of the National League of Republican Colored Women. From its founding, the National Trade and Professional School was plagued by a lack of funds, and it was only through the continuous efforts of Burroughs and the support of ordinary people that the school was able to survive. The variety of appeals for funds and the response of backers of the school are detailed in the contributions file. Most of the donations ranged from one to five dollars. There were also special drives headed by prominent individuals such as the one led by Oscar DePriest in 1933. The Woman's Convention also had a special committee to raise funds for the school, and from 1927 to 1940 it sponsored a field secretary, Ella E. Whitfield, who traveled across the country soliciting money. In 1937, the National Baptist Convention passed a resolution compelling the Woman's Convention to withdraw its support from the National Trade and Professional School. The contributions file shows that contributors remained loyal to the school despite the opposition of their leaders. During this period also, the school received its greatest assistance from members of the white community, particularly the Woman's Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention. The school never received substantial donations from philanthropic organizations, although the Phelps-Stokes Fund made annual contributions ranging from $125 to $250. Apparently there was no uniform system of maintaining accounts. Money collected by the school from gifts and pledges and by the Woman's Convention from contributions and sales of literature was entered in "receipts" or "cash" accounts. Accounts payable were carried in books marked "expenses" or "firm accounts"; records of tuition payments were kept in separate student accounts. Occasionally, accounts for the Woman's Convention and the school are included in the same volume. For some years, accounts were posted in double entry ledgers, and in a few instances account books for specific categories were used in later years for other accounts as well. Incomplete records of the commercial ventures which the school attempted from time to time, such as the Campus Shop and Sunlight Laundry, are included at the end of the school's accounts. Account books and bills and receipts relating to the National Trade and Professional School are arranged by school term; those of the Woman's Convention follow the convention's fiscal year, which ran from August 1 to July 31. Therefore, income and expenses can be reconciled with totals in the account books and in the annual reports prepared by Burroughs for the Woman's Convention and the school's Board of Trustees. After Burroughs became president of the Woman's Convention, she immediately began to determine the financial status of the organization and to implement policies which changed its fiscal operation. She instituted the Committee Plan whereby members of the convention were organized into committees authorized to raise funds for specific categories of activities. Thus money raised for a given objective could be used only for that purpose. The reports of these committees, appeals for contributions for special projects, executive financial reports, and financial matters relating to the publication of the The Worker are included in the Woman's Convention section of the Administrative and Financial File. When the National Trade and Professional School opened in 1909, there were five students and eight assistants. At its zenith the school could accommodate about 150 students. After 1953 the school accepted only students who wanted to prepare for missionary service. One of the most important items in the Student Records series is a volume containing the scholastic achievements of the first students. In addition to individual student folders, mainly for the 1940s, this series contains a file for individuals seeking information about the school, complete enrollment records, 1909-1910 through 1930-1931, and sporadic records from 1932-1933 through 1951-1952. Transcripts and other listings of student grades and a few miscellaneous rollbooks for the early years complete this series. In her 1902 corresponding secretary's report to the Woman's Convention, Burroughs emphasized the need for black Christian women to have access to literature and teaching materials in order to prepare themselves to be leaders in the churches and organizations. On behalf of the Woman's Convention she assumed the task of making literature available, writing many of the publications herself. When the Woman's Convention did not have its own publications on requested subjects, Burroughs often purchased the required material from trade publishers and had it forwarded to subscribers. In 1934, with the assistance of Una Roberts Lawrence and the Woman's Missionary Union, she relaunched the The Worker as a missionary magazine and teaching tool. She edited the magazine from 1934 until her death in May 1961, increasing its quarterly circulation from 375 to over 100,000. The Subscription and Literature series includes orders for publications through 1953-1954, when the content becomes more routine, and is generally limited to orders and comments on the value of The Worker to local missionary societies. Most of the orders prior to 1953-1954 are letters containing requests for instructional literature and procedural information for organizing various groups within Baptist churches. A large percentage of the letters during the 1920s and 1930s reflect the interest of Southern whites in fostering missionary and young people's societies in black Baptist churches. For the later years, the series includes subscription and literature orders for 1960-1961, the last year Burroughs edited The Worker, and for 1962-1963, its first year under a new editor. For the latter subscription year, however, the Burroughs Papers cover only states listed alphabetically beginning with Maryland. Bound volumes contain subscription orders for The Worker, which the school began publishing in 1912. Two issues of The Worker are filed in the Miscellany series. During the 1957 meeting of the Woman's Convention, Burroughs proposed a "Nation-Wide Crusade to Improve Life on All Fronts." The response to this crusade is included at the end of the Subscription and Literature series. The Miscellany series contains a file on the controversy with the National Baptist Convention over the legal status of the National Training School and miscellaneous records relating to the Woman's Convention, the National Trade and Professional School, and other organizations with which Burroughs was associated. It also includes in a group of pamphlets relating to blacks The Slave History of the Life of Rev. Ebenezer Bird and His Work as a Preacher, written by Theodore S. W. Parker. Correspondents in the Nannie H. Burroughs Papers include Charles C. Adams, Mary McLeod Bethune, Janie Bradford, Rebekah J. Calloway, Oscar DePriest, J. H. Dillard, Margery B. Gaillard, Henrietta M. Gibbs, Earl L. Harrison, Sallie Hert, J. H. Jackson, William Henry Jernagin, Lewis Garnett Jordan, Daisy E. Lampkin, Una Roberts Lawrence, Shirley W. Layten, Kathleen Mallory, Uvee R. Mdodana-Arbouin, Robert Russa Moton, William Pickens, A. Clayton Powell (1865-1953), Adam Clayton Powell, (1908-1972), Emmett J. Scott, Sallie W. Stewart, Anson Phelps Stokes, Geneva Wallace, Lacey Kirkland Williams, Marguerite V. Wood, Mrs. Ellis A. Yost, and Geneva R. Young. Organization of the PapersThe collection is arranged in nine series:
Description of Series
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