MIDDLEBURG — As part of an annual tradition of hosting distinguished African-American scholars during Black History Month, Dr. Sharon Harley spoke at Notre Dame Academy in Middleburg last Friday. Harley is an associate professor of the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Her address, "Lessons of Black Empowerment for All Americans," focused on the theme that people are not born with empowerment, but instead gain it. In 1978, as a graduate student at Howard University in Washington, Harley and a fellow student wrote African-American Women’s Struggles and Images. Harley, who has received numerous scholarships and fellowships, is currently working on a book, Dignity and Damnation.

Last week, she examined the lives of two African-American women, Nannie Helen Burroughs and Gloria Richardson. Both, she said, were marginalized in African-American and American history even though they were well-known figures.

In 1909 Burroughs founded a school for African-Americans in Washington, the National Training School for Women and Girls. She was intensely involved in community activities, feminization in the Baptist Church and feminist secular groups.

Born in Orange, Va., her slave father earned enough money as a carpenter to buy his freedom. Afterward, her mother brought her to Washington for the best schools. Even though she excelled as a student, after graduation she was not offered a teaching position. Burroughs believed it was because such positions "went to lighter-skinned black women," said Dr. Harley, but more accurately "because her mother was a washerwoman" and the jobs often went to prominent people.

Harley said when she reads Burroughs writings, she is "moved because she didn’t let her disappointment discourage her." At Burrough’s school, in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic, she instilled the "Three B’s," in her students: the Bible, the bath and the broom. By the 1920s the school had 2,000 students, some coming from as far as the Caribbean. She also made African-American History mandatory in the curriculum.

Burroughs said that "all labor is worthy of standards and prestige," because she believed that everyone should be able to earn a living wage and also hoped to professionalize domestic work, said Harley. In addition to the traditional courses for women’s professions, the female students could also take those that were not, such as those for printers, barbers and shoe repairers.

For more than 50 years, Burroughs worked with the National Baptist Convention’s Women’s Auxiliary.She was tireless in this effort, delivering over 200 speeches, writing over 9,000 letters and receiving over 5,000 in response, according to Harley.

Burroughs was active in the early Civil Rights Movement. Harley pointed out that the movement did not begin in the 1960s with the activities of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Burroughs was an outspoken critic of racial injustice, for example condemning the lynching of black men. She also spoke out against women not having the vote. Due to her vocalization of then-President Woodrow Wilson’s failure to stop lynching, she was put under federal surveillance.

As an active member in the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, she and her associates sometimes met in the Washington home of Frederick Douglass, the famous black orator and writer who supported their efforts. She had a national speaking circuit beginning in the 1930s, which continued until she died in 1961. Five thousand people attended her funeral.

Richardson, however, is still alive and living in New York, where Harley interviewed her in her Greenwich Village apartment. Richardson said it was most important to her to be remembered as an activist.

Born to a prominent family in Baltimore, Richardson later relocated to Cambridge, Md. During the 1960s, job options for women were limited to being a housewife, teacher or domestic. Richardson was drawn into the Civil Rights Movement by her daughter. Harley reminded the Notre Dame Academy audience that the movement was mainly led by youths, such as college students.

It was unusual for a prominent woman to lead the movement, because its core consisted of working-class blacks and whites. Richardson’s grandfather was on the City Council, and even though he was one of the town’s distinguished citizens, he still encountered discrimination, Harley said. This was one of Richardson’s reasons for her activism. In 1963, Richardson, her mother and her daughter were arrested during a protest against a restaurant that refused to serve blacks.

At that time, President John F. Kennedy called her and others to Washington for counsel on resolving the racial conflict which was brewing in the country. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed in the United States.

"She was one of the first people to link civil rights with economic justice," said Harley.

One reason that Burroughs and Richardson were not more well known was because they did things which women, by societal standards, "weren’t supposed to," said Harley. "Why don’t we have a fuller consideration of them by scholars?" asked Harley. "Their contributions were often as important as those made by their male counterparts." One of their legacies was that "their actions inspired the next generation of civil rights activists of the late 1960s and 1970s," said Harley.

After her presentation, she took questions from the students. One asked her, "Who do you feel the most influential woman is in African American history?" Harley said it depends on the era and the audience, for example in the antebellum South, it would be Sojourner Truth, and today it might be Oprah Winfrey.