From votership and racial justice to the continuous battle for economic equity, America at 250 is not far off from the nation that Nannie Helen Burroughs aimed to improve more than a century ago.
Born in Orange County, Virginia, Burroughs left a legacy as a champion of workforce and academic development, though the path she paved reaches far beyond the DMV — and well beyond her lifetime.
As today’s Supreme Court rulings and executive orders aim to reverse decades of progress, local advocates say it’s time to walk in the footsteps of one of the nation’s most overlooked heroines.
“She is really an unsung leader in the labor movement, the civil rights movement, and the women’s suffrage movement,” said Rutgers University associate professor Dr. Danielle Phillips Cunningham. “Her history brings to us the importance of what I call unglamorous everyday movement-building work. We benefited from [the movements], we got the language; now I think some people want to acquire the tools of putting history into action, and that was certainly what Burroughs did.”
When Burroughs launched the National Training School for Women and Girls, it was the tip of a revolution, said the professor.
The Deanwood campus, now in the throes of a national preservation effort, stood as a monument to community investment, restructuring social limitations that relegated all women to domestic work over autonomy. More than that, the late educator laid a foundation to counter “the failed promises of Reconstruction,” Phillips Cunningham told The Informer.
“We are now dealing with people in political power at all levels – from the White House on down to local school boards – who are trying to control what we teach. That suppression of Black history has existed since emancipation,” she continued. “What I hope people will take from [Burroughs] is, how do we organize now? Older generations of Black communities know how to do it…but the baton has been handed to us.”
Where Burroughs’ legacy resonates most: laying a blueprint for the next 250 years.
“If people like Nannie Helen Burroughs were absent from that history… we lose that important example of what Black leadership, women’s leadership and community-centered empowerment and innovation actually looks like,” Kirsty Boyette, deputy director of the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF), told The Informer. “Putting a face to a name and having those examples where people can really see themselves in how this country as a whole has been built on the backs of others, I think [she’s] just a really good example of that.”
From Wealth Creation to Racial Justice: Burroughs Lives On
With the Fourth of July weekend projecting up to 50 million visitors, District landmarks are set to see a boost in tourism – except those still awaiting preservation.
As co-founders of the Nannie Helen Burroughs Preservation Association, Phillips Cunningham and Ward 7 ANC Commissioner Patricia Williams are marking the milestone with a campaign to preserve the land that once was the National Training School for Women and Girls.
Currently, the only building listed in the National Register of Historic Places is the Trades Hall, which currently serves as the headquarters for the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
“I want this to be alive and well and flourishing for our constituents for generations to come,” Williams said, envisioning the impact of the campus’ preservation. “It would help with revitalization, [eliminating] gentrification. Workforce development programming for women and girls, [and] some for the men and young boys too…to make sure everybody is getting their fair wages, everybody’s getting job training, everybody can make a way where they can afford to live here in D.C.”
Evidently, that same mentality proved to be the ethos for change in the height of the Great Depression.
Burroughs kickstarted what became Cooperative Industries in 1936 as a means to expand economic wealth in D.C., harping on education and ownership as the root of African American freedom.
With the classrooms teaching skills like production, sewing, furniture making, plus others, the basement told the stories of a community building infrastructure around cooperation –– be it education, employment, and agriculture, or retail, healthcare, and other mutual aid work.
“Long before community wealth building became a part of our vocabulary, [Burroughs] was already putting those ideas into practice,” Boyette told The Informer. “She saw cooperative ownership as this practical strategy for economic freedom, where dignity is required for opportunity and opportunity requires ownership, and that’s what the cooperative business model provides you with.”
An inductee of the 2024 Cooperative Hall of Fame – led by the Cooperative Development Foundation – Burroughs was a force for sustainability and survival throughout the Great Depression.
When she wasn’t co-founding the National Association of Wage Earners, or establishing the first international labor periodical, Burroughs used Cooperative Industries to boost industrial co-ops, worker co-ops, and even farming to bring fresh food and health care into Northeast, D.C. Meanwhile, she served as president of the six-acre land that encompassed the National Training School for Women and Girls, renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in 1964.
“A lot of the questions that she was asking back in the 1930s: how do we create good jobs, strengthen local economies, expand ownership, and how do we build wealth that stays in communities? Those are still questions that we’re asking today,” Boyette continued. “She wasn’t just creating those businesses; she was creating institutions through cooperatives that gave people the economic voice. It’s not just a business model; it’s a way for communities to create resilience.”
Much like Burroughs, Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, a professor of City University of New York’s John Jay College, said she views co-op ecosystems as a tangible solution to the compounding failures of today’s economy.
According to the author and political economist, who chaired Burroughs’ Cooperative Hall of Fame nomination, the benefits can scale from food and housing insecurity to affordable costs, business equity, energy sustainability, and even navigating the growing digital footprint. Even further, she also noted the well-rounded boost in leadership and business management.
“I think the 2020s have shown us that we’re still struggling, that the current economy and capitalist ownership models that we have aren’t really working,” she told The Informer, reflecting on Burroughs’ legacy in the year 250. “During the COVID pandemic, a lot of workers, especially Black and brown workers, found that they were considered essential in terms of [having] to show up and be exposed to the germs, but they weren’t…paid enough, their health wasn’t taken into account well enough.
[This] really solves so many of the issues and allows us all to be entrepreneurs, decision-makers in what happens to us economically.”
While co-op barriers exist –– such as access to capital, education, and resources –– the power of storytelling can often be the source of vitality in the business.
“We use our movement ancestors to remind us of the importance of certain things, like [labor and resistance], education, standing up for what’s right,” Gordon-Nembhard continued. “Here we are now in the 21st century…[and] these people really show that we can do it. That we have done it, we should do it…and even show us the way to make sure we’re creating a better world.”
Serving the Next 250: ‘We Must Fight Like Nannie‘
As Phillips-Cunningham sees it, the efforts to preserve the Deanwood stomping grounds––and the legacies that precede it–– are just as much about honoring the past as restoring the future of democracy.
The associate professor reflected on the state of America in the wake of the Compromise of 1877, when Jim Crow laws prompted a rollback on more than four centuries of resistance toward Black liberation. Among the parallels most jarring in 2026: a sharp decline in Black politicians, reflected in today’s redistricting that threatens more than half of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with repeated attempts to diminish cultural narratives and dismantle diversity initiatives.
“It’s basically become a crime to teach Black women’s history in Texas. There have been state penalties––revoking your tenure, sending harassing emails,” Phillips Cunningham told The Informer.
She also highlighted where Burroughs formed the antidote, notably making Black history exams a graduation requirement of the training school.
“She understood that it was essential knowledge for developing a sense of racial pride, knowing where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we need to go,” said the New Jersey-based professor, “[and] that it was essential to community organizing and political organizing.”
Among other vital tools to take from Burroughs’ story, Phillips Cunningham touted her persistence in civic engagement. In addition to advocating for voting rights, the late activist founded the National League of Republican Colored Women, one of the first Black women-voter organizations in the country.
What’s more, by researching historic grassroots movements, freedom fighters can find footing in the current political climate, Williams adds, all the while learning the tools to “create a way,” as Burroughs never shied from.
“And she kept going until the day that the Lord called her home [in 1961],” Williams told The Informer. “She just wanted to bring people together to accomplish [what] we were entitled to as a Black race –– human rights, [voting rights]. We should not have anybody’s administration trying to take that away from us. We have to do just as she did.”
In the meantime, the push for listing in the National Register of Historic Places ensues, but the dynamic duo behind it touted a historic marker to be placed at the corner of 1115 Rhode Island Avenue, home to Burroughs’ National Association of Wage Earners.
With more celebrations and the 2027 marker in her honor, the hope for the next 250 is to find purpose in Burroughs’ story, whom Williams chalked up to “a superhero with no limits.”
“If I had to look up to someone outside of my mom, it would be her. She did a lot for the city; she brought a lot to the city,” said the Ward 7 commissioner. “So we must continue to fight like Nannie.”
