8 Men
Blue Galactic
Eagle
Galactic Eagle’s
Vision
Pierces the Veil of Maya
–
That which to our Senses
Seems real but is Illusion
For beneath the Surface
Of third-dimension
Realms of Reality
shimmer
In unified,
glorified Wonder
We have lived so
long
In a mechanized World -
We are hypnotized –
We are hypnotized –
Mesmerized to Sleep
Deep in the Consciousness
Of self-realized
Samadhi
We perceive with Cosmic
Vision
The sacred Unity of Life
From Source were we
born –
To Source we re-turn.
©Kleomichele Leeds
Nannie Helen Burroughs
Nannie Helen Burroughs, (May 2, 1879 – May 20, 1961) was an African-American educator, orator, religious leader, civil rights activist, feminist and businesswoman in the United States. Her speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the 1900 National Baptist Convention in Virginia, instantly won her fame and recognition. In 1909, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC. She continued to work there until her death in 1961. In 1964, it was renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor and began operating as a co-ed elementary school. Constructed in 1927-1928, its Trades Hall has a National Historic Landmark designation.
Early life and education
Nannie H. Burroughs was born on May 2, 1879, in Orange, Virginia. She is considered to be the eldest of the daughters of John and Jennie Burroughs. Around the time she was 5 years old, her youngest sister died in utero and her father, who was a farmer and Baptist preacher, died a few years later. Her mother and father had skills and capacities that enabled them to prosper by the time the war ended and freed them. She had a grandfather known as Lija the carpenter, during the slave era. He was capable of buying his way out to freedom.
By 1883, Burroughs and her mother relocated to D.C. and stayed with Cordelia Mercer, Nannie Burroughs' aunt, and older sister of Jennie Burroughs. In D.C., there were better opportunities for employment and education. She attended M Street High School. It was here that she organized the Harriet Beecher Stowe Literary Society, and studied business and domestic science. There she met her role models Anna J. Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, who were active in the suffrage movement and civil rights.
Burroughs expected to work as a teacher in the District of Columbia Public Schools. She was told she was "too dark" — they preferred lighter-complexioned black teachers. Her skin color and social status had thwarted efforts to become a teacher. Burroughs said, "the die was cast [to] beat and ignore both until death." This zeal opened a door to the profession for low-income and social status black women. This led Burroughs to establish a training school for women and girls.
Career
From 1898 to 1909, Burroughs was employed in Louisville, Kentucky, as an editorial secretary and bookkeeper of the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention. During her tenure in Louisville, the Women's Industrial Club was formed. The club held domestic science and management courses. One of the founders of the Women's Convention was Nannie Burroughs, providing additional help to the National Baptist Convention and serving from 1900 to 1947: nearly half a century. She was president for 13 years in the Women's Convention. This convention had the largest attendance of African-Americans ever witnessed. This convention was highly important for black religious groups, thanks to the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) which formed in 1896, the largest of three and including more than 100 local women's clubs. Because of her contribution to the NACW, the National Association of Wage Earners was founded to draw public attention to the dilemma of African American women. Nannie Burroughs served as president, with other well-known club women such as vice president Mary McLeod Bethune and treasurer Maggie Lena Walker. These women placed more emphasis on public interest educational forums than trade-union activities. Burroughs' other memberships included Ladies' Union Band, Saint Luke's, Saturday Evening, and Daughters of the Round Table Clubs.
By 1928 Burroughs was appointed to committee chairwoman by Herbert Hoover's administration, which was associated with Negro housing, for the White House Conference of 1931: Home Building and Ownership after the stock market crash of 1929, just as the Great Depression began. Burroughs spoke at the Virginia Women's Missionary Union at Richmond with the address "How White and Colored Women Can Cooperate in Building a Christian Civilization." in 1933.
Burroughs was also a published playwright. In the 1920's, she wrote The Slabtown District Convention and Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight?, both one-act plays for amateur church theatrical groups. The popularity of the comedic, satiric Slabtown necessitated multiple printings through the succeeding century, although sometimes the wording is updated as needed by successive productions.
Training school and racial mobility
During the first 40 years of the 20th century, young African-American women were being prepared by the National Training School to "uplift the race" and earn a livelihood. With the incorporation of industrial education into training in morality, religion, and cleanliness, Nannie Helen Burroughs and her staff needed to resolve a conflict central to many African-American women: "wage laborer" was their main role in the service occupations of the ghetto, as well as their biggest role model as guardians for "the race" of the community. The dominant culture of African-Americans' immoral image had to be challenged by the National Training School, training African-American women from a young age to become efficient wage workers as well as community activists, reinforcing the ideal of respectability, as it is extremely important to "racial uplift." Racial pride, respectability, and work ethic were all key factors in training being offered by the National Training School and racial uplift ideology. These qualities were seen as extremely important for African-American women's success as fund-raisers, wage workers, and "race women." All these gathered from the school would bring African-American women into the public sphere including politics, uplifting racial aid, and the domestic sphere expanded. By understanding the grassroots nature of uplift ideology, Burroughs used it to promote her school.
Death and legacy
On May 20, 1961 Burroughs was found dead in Washington D.C. of natural causes. She had died alone; she never married because she had dedicated her life to the National Trade and Professional School. She was buried at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church where she was a member.
Three years after her death the institution was renamed the Nannie Burroughs School as it remains today. Despite the passing of more than fifty years her death, Nannie Burroughs' history and legacy continue to motivate modern African-American women. The Manuscript Division in The Library of Congress holds 110,000 items in her papers.
1907, she received an honorary M.A. from Eckstein Norton University, an historically black college in Cane Spring, Bullitt County, Kentucky. (It merged with Simpson University in 1912.)
In 1964, the school that Burroughs founded in 1909 as the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC, was renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor. Its Trades Hall has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.
1975, Mayor Walter E. Washington declared May 10 Nannie Helen Burroughs Day.
Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE, a street in the Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, DC, is named for her.
In 1997 the National Women's History Project honored Burroughs during Women's History Month*
MEN
Kin 255: Blue Galactic Eagle
I harmonize in order to create
Modeling mind
I seal the output of vision
With the galactic tone of integrity
I am guided by the power of self-generation.
Utopia serves as a template necessitated by the belief in human imperfection.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2018-2019.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Ajna Chakra (Gamma Plasma)
No comments:
Post a Comment