Nannie helen burroughs biography

May 2, 1879 to May 20, 1961

Nannie Helen Burroughs was an educator, religious leader, and social activist who helped found the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention (NBC).

In August 1954 she invited Martin Luther King, Jr., the young son of her friends, Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King, to address the Women’s Auxiliary on “The Vision of the World Made New.” In a letter to King, Jr., thanking him for his speech, she wrote: “What your message did to their thinking and to their faith is ‘bread cast upon the water’ that will be seen day by day in their good works in their communities” (Papers 2:296).

Born in Orange, Virginia, in 1879, Burroughs moved to Washington, D.C., where she attended high school, in 1883.

She worked in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1898 to 1909, as a bookkeeper and editorial secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the NBC. After helping to found the Women’s A