Meet Nannie Helen Burroughs, a lesser-known Black labor activist
(NewsNation) — This Black History Month, 'African Americans and Labor' is the front and center theme put forth by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin are well-known figures celebrated during Black History Month, but by highlighting labor this year, the association hopes to educate people about lesser-known activists like Nannie Helen Burroughs.
Dr. Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, an associate professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, told NewsNation the lesser-known activist is 'one of the most influential Black labor leaders of the 20th century.'
'Most labor movement histories highlight the contributions of white men and sometimes even white women, but Black women have been fighting for labor rights since slavery,' Phillips-Cunningham said. 'And Nannie Helen Burroughs continued that tradition.'
Nannie Helen Burroughs, born in Virginia around 1880 to a formerly enslaved couple, was a lifelong educator and labor activist.
She and her mother moved to Washington, D.C., following her father's passing, where she attended and excelled in school. In Washington, she met other like-minded Black women like Anna J. Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, both notable suffragettes in their own right.
'Although Nannie Helen Burroughs is not known by many people, it is very important that we know her story, especially regarding the overlapping Civil Rights Movement and the labor rights movement,' Phillips-Cunningham said.
Burroughs founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909, giving Black women access to an education not led by white missionaries.
This was especially important as racism infiltrated scientific ideas of the time, with claims that Black women 'were incapable of learning academic subjects' or working outside of domestic service or sharecropping.
Burroughs rejected that notion, according to Phillips-Cunningham, and her school featured 'an extensive curriculum that offered a litany of academic subjects.'
With a certification in domestic science from Burroughs' school, women were able to leverage their employers for better working conditions and a living wage.
'Burroughs had this saying that really drove her curriculum,' Phillips-Cunningham said. 'She said, 'We must idealize the real before we realize the ideal.''
Other courses included horticulture, stenography, beauty culture, printing and more.
'She was sending a loud message to the labor market and to the U.S. political economy, and saying, 'Hey, Black women are skilled workers, and they should be hired for any position that they want to have and that they are qualified for,'' Phillips-Cunningham said.
Though Burroughs passed away in 1961, Phillips-Cunningham believes she 'directly influenced the Civil Rights Act of 1964.'
'She laid an important foundation for that act, which outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex and nationality,' Phillips-Cunningham said, adding that Burroughs impacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
For Phillips-Cunningham, Burroughs' impact on the educational world hits close to home.
'It's women like her that paved the way for women like me,' she said. 'Without Burroughs and other women like her, I wouldn't have a Ph.D, and many other Black women wouldn't either.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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