Book Talk: Nannie Helen Burroughs
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 | 5:00pm – 6:30pm EST | Arrupe Hall Multipurpose Room, Georgetown University Main Campus
Hosted by the Georgetown University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Gender+ Justice Initiative, Department of Black Studies, and Department of History.
Join us for a book talk with Prof. Danielle Phillips-Cunningham discussing her latest publication Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Tower of Strength in the Labor World. This event will be moderated by Dr. Nadia E. Brown, Professor of Government and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Black girls and women faced a harsh career landscape. Domestic labor and sharecropping—which were the least regulated and lowest paying occupations for women in the US economy—were the few available ways for Black women and girls to make a living in Jane Crow America. In response to these circumstances, Nannie Helen Burroughs, the pioneering Black American educator and civil rights leader, established the National Training School for Women and Girls (NTS) in Washington, DC. Nannie Helen Burroughs tells the story of the powerful labor movement that resulted from Burroughs’s work at the NTS and in the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. The NTS proved to be a revolutionary labor and educational initiative that redefined household employment as a profession where social justice for the Black community could be achieved.
About the Author:
Dr. Danielle Phillips-Cunningham is an associate professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Women’s Studies from Spelman College and a doctorate in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University. She sits on the Executive Board of the Labor and Working Class History Association and her areas of expertise are women’s labor and migration histories, feminist/womanist theories and research methods, and African American history.
Free and open to all.
___
Accommodation requests can be made at genderjustice@georgetown.edu