The School Of the Three Bs 50TH STREET & NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS AVENUE NE Atop this hill are the sprawling grounds on which Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in 1909. Burroughs advocated for women’s rights, civil rights, and religious activism. Determined to teach her students to become independent women, she stressed the three Bs— Bible, Bath, and Broom—with lessons in Godliness, physical cleanliness, and housekeeping. But she didn’t limit her charges’ horizons: they also learned dressmaking, printing, and entrepreneurship. The school grew quickly. In fact its presence helped Lincoln Heights and Greater Deanwood develop from sparsely settled hamlets to desirable residential communities. But when Burroughs had first proposed opening a vocational boarding school, few believed that such an institution was possible or practical in Washington. Even her friend Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), the foremost champion of black vocational education, advised Burroughs that such schools were more appropriate in southern locations. Washington said that DC’s black population “could never be made to favor anything but styles and politics.” The school trained thousands from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean until 1964. That year its trustees abandoned the vocational cur- riculum and created the Nannie Helen Burroughs School, offering nursery through sixth grade. The Progressive National Baptist Convention, owner of the school, has its headquarters on the grounds. Across 50th Street is Washington & Sons Funeral Home, in business here since the 1920s. At one time this family-run neighborhood institution operated two additional funeral homes in Northwest DC.
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