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"In some of the bleakest moments in American history, Nannie Helen Burroughs stood tall as a labor leader, an intellectual, and a mover and shaker. Her vision of African American workers--and particularly domestic workers--organized with power and dignity--is what now inspires the entire American labor movement. In this pioneering work, Danielle Phillips-Cunningham not only rightly centers Burroughs, she reveals how Burroughs was a critical intellectual partner of better known men like W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. After reading Phillips-Cunningham's book, I see the history of the labor, civil, and women's rights movements in America differently.  I hear voices I did not hear before."

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 ---Randi Weingarten,

President of the American Federation of  Teachers

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" In this pioneering text, Burroughs emerges as an influential labor philosopher/organizer and one of the most passionate, unrelenting advocates for the economic rights of Black women, especially domestic workers and others victimized by race, gender, and class discrimination in various workplaces." 

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—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, founding director, Women's Research & Resource Center, Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies, Spelman College

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“Phillips-Cunningham’s book is a tremendous achievement. Well-written, exhaustively researched, and provocatively framed, it will recast historical understandings of the history of US education, the Black women’s club movement, labor, the Black Baptist church, the Black Arts movement, and Black women's friendships and relationships outside of nuclear families through the first half of the 20th century."

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—Annelise Orleck, author of Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty

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"A groundbreaking testament to the indomitable spirit of Nannie Helen Burroughs, this meticulously researched and masterfully written book by Phillips-Cunningham captures the extraordinary life and tireless efforts of a fearless advocate for African American women and workers' rights."

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—Kelisha B. Graves, Virginia State University, editor of Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Documentary Portrait of an Early Civil Rights Pioneer,

1900–1959

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