Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Tower of Strength in the Labor World

The story of one of the most influential labor leaders of the twentieth century reveals powerful lessons that still resonate

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Black girls and women faced a harsh career landscape. Domestic labor and sharecropping-which were the least regulated and lowest paying occupations for women in the US economy-were the few available ways for Black women and girls to make a living in Jane Crow America. In response to these circumstances, Nannie Helen Burroughs, the pioneering Black American educator and civil rights leader, established the National Training School for Women and Girls (NTS) in Washington, DC. Nannie Helen Burroughs tells the story of the powerful labor movement that resulted from Burroughs’s work at the NTS and in the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. The NTS proved to be a revolutionary labor and educational initiative that redefined household employment as a profession where social justice for the Black community could be achieved. The NTS was integral to a Black clubwomen’s labor movement that paved the way for a broader transformation of the economic landscape for Black women and girls. Nannie Helen Burroughs establishes Burroughs as one of America’s most influential labor leaders in the twentieth century and reveals the powerful lessons her work and ideas still offer for America’s laborers, labor organizers, scholars, and women’s rights and racial justice activists today. It also establishes Burroughs and her colleagues in the National Association of Colored Women as the architects of an unprecedented labor movement.

Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, PhD, is associate professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is the recipient of the National Women’s Studies Association’s Sara A. Whaley Book Prize for Putting Their Hands on Race (2020)