On February 28, 2021, The Washington Post ran the feature, “Denied a teaching job for being ‘too Black’ she started her own school—and a movement” by Jess McHugh. The piece illuminates how Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) fought tirelessly for Black women of every shade to win the right to an education, fair wages, suffrage and a place of leadership in the country. Burroughs is just one of the many African American intellectuals whose work has been long excluded from the literary canon.
In the piece, Kelisha B. Graves discusses her book, Nannie Helen Burroughs, published by the University of Notre Dame Press. The 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’ work as a theologian, philosopher, activist, educator, intellectual, and evangelist, as well as the myriad of ways that her career resisted definition.
Read the Washington Post article here.
Nannie Helen Burroughs is part of the African American Intellectual Heritage series, edited by Paul Spickard and Patrick B. Miller.
This story was first published here.