Sunday, 30 August 2009 06:00

Burroughs embraced formal education, at the time an elusive achievement for African Americans. Upon studying business and domestic science and graduating from the Colored High School in 1896, a young Burroughs helped establish the National Association of Colored Women. A year later she became an associate editor of the Christian Banner in Philadelphia, and in 1900, she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to serve as a secretary for the Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention. Nine years later, Burroughs founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C. (later renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School, it is now a National Historic Landmark). Burroughs’s philosophy of social ministry, centered on education, focused on the Bible, cleanliness, and employment. She assisted many young African American women in bettering their lives. Other Baptists in the early twentieth century took social ministries to heart. In New York, Walter Rauschenbusch ministered among the urban poor and provided a popular theological apologetic for social ministries. Among Southern Baptists, Kathleen Mallory led the Woman’s Missionary Union in focusing on social services programs, while in Canada Baptist pastor-turned-politician Tommy Douglas (recently named as the Greatest Canadian of All Time) became the father of Canada’s public health care system.

Last Updated on Sunday, 28 March 2010 16:39

 

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