Summer Camp Fosters Female Camaraderie and Unity
For the eighth consecutive summer, a group of elders will channel the spirit of Nannie Helen Burroughs, Anna Julia Cooper and other Black female education pioneers as they equip young ladies with the skills needed to navigate adolescence and womanhood. This process...
CAMP UPDATE 2018
Summer of 2018 was a phenomenal success at the Davis Center in Ward 4, Manor Park neighborhood in Northwest Washington, DC. We served 35 girls ages 5-13 and mentored 9 youth from the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). All of our lives were enriched...
Pre-Kwanzaa Program, Saturday, December 16, 2017 6pm
Join us at the Davis Center, 6218 3rd Street NW, Washington DC. Featuring the Malcolm X Drummers and Dancers, Sister Free, and African Marketplace. Free admission. Donations welcome. For more info call 202-256-2518.
Zuri Nia Scholarship Fundraiser Dance – Saturday, December 16, 2017 8pm
Dance the night away at our Zuri Nia Scholarship Fundraiser Dance. Meet us at the Davis Center 6218 3rd Street NW, Washington DC. Featuring DJ Brotha Bush. $10 Donation.
“iThings” Summer Camp has a Highly Successful Sixth Year
“iThings 2 Collard Greens” has successful 6th summer of nurturing the “whole” girl. The ancestral spirit of Sister Nannie Helen Burroughs whispered, “Return me to my relevance,” in the ear of Rev. Mama Kathy English Holt, and the...In Memory of Nannie Helen Burroughs
Nannie Helen Burroughs
(May 2, 1879 – May 20, 1961)
was an African American educator, orator, religious leader, and businesswoman. She gained national recognition for her 1900 speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the National Baptist Convention.
Burroughs created a creed of racial self-help through her program of the three Bs-the Bible, the bath, and the broom. The Bible, the bath, and the broom stood for a clean life, a clean body, and a clean house. She believed domestic work should be professionalized and even unionized.
Burroughs trained her students to become respectable employees by becoming pious, pure, and domestic, but not submissive. She emphasized the importance of being proud black women to all students, by teaching African-American history and culture through a required course in the Department of Negro History.