Kayla Bell, 8, can’t wait to return to camp this year. That’s why a Feb. 23 fundraiser at Seekers Church is so important to her and other girls who attended a summer program called iThings 2 Collard Greens. IThings refer to things like cell phones and computers. The program was created last year by Kathy English Holt, after she attended a retreat while recovering from a health condition. Holt said she was reading a book about Nannie Helen Burroughs at the time. “I could feel Nannie Helen Burroughs telling me to take girls to the retreat center because there is still a need for life skills training,†Holt said. [read more…]
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.