Brown, Hallie Quinn (c. 1845–1949)

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Brown, Hallie Quinn (c. 1845–1949)

African-American pioneer educator, writer, civilrights leader, and elocutionist. Born on March 10, around 1845, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; died in Wilberforce, Ohio, on September 16, 1949; daughter of Frances Jane (Scroggins) Brown and Thomas Arthur Brown; granted B.S., Wilberforce University, 1873; never married; no children.

Awards:

honorary Master of Arts, Wilberforce University (1890); member of the Royal Geographical Society (1894); honorary Doctorate of Law, Wilberforce University (1936); Hallie Quinn Brown Memorial Library of Central State University named in her honor; Hallie Q. Brown Community House in St. Paul, Minnesota, named in her honor.

Moved to Chatham, Ontario, Canada (1865); returned to U.S. (1870); enrolled Wilberforce University (1870), graduated (1873); taught in South Carolina and Mississippi (1873); appointed dean of Allen University (1875); taught in Dayton, Ohio, public school system (1887); appointed dean of women at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (1892); appointed professor of elocution, Wilberforce University (1893); addressed the World Congress of Representative Women, Chicago (May 18, 1893); made first trip to Europe (1894); spoke at the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union Conference, London, England (1895); founded the first British Chautauqua, Wales (1895); presented to Queen Victoria (July 7, 1899); elected president of Ohio State Federation of Women's Clubs (1905–12); represented the Women's Parent Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland (June 14–23, 1910); Julia Emery donated $16,000 to Wilberforce University (1910); Keziah Emery Hall completed (1913); appointed president of the National Association of Colored Women (1920); met Senators Lodge, Shortbridge, McCormick, and President Harding to promote anti-lynching legislation (1922); retired from Wilberforce University (1923); addressed the Republican National Convention (1924); protested segregated seating at the All-American Music Festival of the International Council of Women in Washington, D.C. (1925).

Selected publications:

Bits and Odds: A Choice Selection of Recitations for School, Lyceum, and Parlour Entertainment (Xenia, OH: Chew, 1884); Trouble in Turkeytrot Church (printed privately, 1917); Tales My Father Told Me and Other Stories (Wilberforce, OH: 1925); Our Women: Homespun Heroines and Women of Distinction (Xenia, OH: Aldrine, 1926); Pen Pictures of Pioneers of Wilberforce (Xenia, OH: Aldrine, 1937).

The exact year of Hallie Brown's birth is unknown. We do know, however, that she was born on March 10, around 1845, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the fifth of six children. Her parents Thomas and Frances Brown were freed slaves. Born in Frederick County, Maryland, Thomas Brown, son of Scottish plantation owner Ann Brown and her African-American overseer, purchased his freedom in 1843. Frances Brown was also of mixed parentage. Born in Winchester County, Virginia, she was freed by her white grandfather, a veteran of the American Revolution. The couple wed in 1840. Thomas Brown was employed as a steward and express agent on the river boats that traveled between Pittsburgh and New Orleans; he also owned a substantial amount of real estate prior to the Civil War.

The Brown household became a frequent stop for slaves fleeing to Canada on the Under-ground Railroad. Thus, Hallie Brown was exposed to the injustices faced by African-Americans at an early age. In 1864, the family moved to Chatham, Ontario, Canada, due to Frances Brown's poor health. It was here that Hallie received her early education. In 1870, the Browns returned to the United States and settled in Wilberforce, Ohio, where they built Homewood Cottage.

In 1868, Hallie Brown enrolled at Wilberforce University, a Methodist Episcopal Church institution for African-Americans. While a student, she heard Susan B. Anthony speak on women's suffrage. Thus, the rights of women became a lifelong concern. In 1873, Brown graduated sixth in her class with a Bachelor of Science degree. During the summers, she studied at the Chautauqua Lecture School, graduating as the salutatorian of her class in 1886.

Following graduation, Brown was drawn to the South by the pressing need for teachers. In the aftermath of the Civil War, conditions were primitive. At first, she ran a school on the Sonora plantation in Mississippi, teaching both children and adults. Like many plantation schools, the building was in a state of constant disrepair. When her entreaties to local authorities to make repairs to the roof fell on deaf ears, she and one of her students repaired it themselves. Brown's reputation as a devoted and talented teacher spread quickly. She moved to Yazoo City, where she taught public school. Due to the turbulent atmosphere in Mississippi during the 1870s, her mother feared for her safety, however, and Hallie Brown sought employment elsewhere. From 1875 to 1887, she taught at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. She also served as dean and administered the university's night-school program.

Returning to Ohio in 1887, Brown taught in the Dayton public-school system for four years and established a night school for adults based on the Allen University model. The plight of African-Americans from the South concerned her greatly. In 1892, Brown briefly accepted the position of dean of women at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Afterwards, she returned to Wilberforce University, where she became a professor of elocution in 1893. At Wilberforce, she met two other prominent African-American teachers, Elizabeth Keckley who taught home economics, and W.E.B. Du Bois, who taught Latin and Greek. In subsequent years, Brown became a member of the Board of Trustees. Until shortly before her death, she would continue to teach Sunday School classes at Wilberforce.

While teaching in Dayton, Brown met Professor Robertson of the Boston School of Oratory and soon enrolled. The event proved to be the beginning of a long career as a public speaker. She frequently performed with the Wilberforce Concert Company, later known as the Stewart Company. A family friend, Bishop Daniel A. Payne, agreed to sponsor a lecture tour in the South in an effort to raise money for Wilberforce. Over the years, Brown lectured in every state in America, with the exception of Maine and Vermont. Her favorite topic was African-American folklore and songs, and she was always well received. Noted the Red Oaks (Iowa) Express:

Miss Hallie Q. Brown has but few equals as an elocutionist. She has a sweet, flexible voice. Her enunciation is distinct, her manner graceful and her gesticulations eminently appropriate to the character of her selections. Some of her humorous selections caused wave after wave of laughter to roll over the audience and were most heartily encored.

On May 18, 1893, Hallie Brown addressed the overwhelmingly white World Congress of Representative Women at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago on the need for African-American women's organizations. Other speakers included Francis E.W. Harper, Fannie Jackson Coppin, Sarah J. Early, Fannie Barrier Williams , and Anna Julia Cooper .

Brown founded the Neighborhood Club in Wilberforce and welcomed the formation of national organizations for African-American women, such as the Colored Women's League, which was founded in 1894, and the National Federation of Afro-American Women, which was founded in 1895. The mandate of these organizations focused primarily on aiding the poor, the elderly, and the sick, but they were also devoted to the cause of women's suffrage. These groups gave African-American women a national voice for the first time.

From 1894 onwards, Brown undertook several trips to Europe, spending considerable time in Germany, Switzerland, and France, and lecturing throughout Britain. In Edinburgh, Scotland, she became a member of the Royal Geographical Society. Her 1894 tour was sponsored by the noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whom she had met in Chicago the year before. Douglass supplied her with letters of introduction to aid her fund-raising efforts for the Wilberforce University library.

Brown was also an organizer and advocate in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In 1895, she was the American representative to the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union Conference held in London, as well as one of the speakers. In the same year, she founded the first British Chautauqua in Northern Wales. On a sub-sequent visit to Britain in 1899, Brown was presented to Queen Victoria and spoke before Her Majesty and Alexandra of Denmark , princess of Wales. During the celebration of Queen Victoria's jubilee, Brown was the guest of the Lord Mayor of London. While there, she also participated in the International Conference of Women. After the death of Queen Victoria, Brown appeared before King George V and Queen Mary of Teck in a command performance.

From 1905 to 1912, Hallie Brown served as the president of the Ohio State Federation of Women's Clubs. She also represented the Women's Parent Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1910 at World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. She stayed in Britain for seven months, and the Sheffield Daily Telegraph dubbed her "one of the finest female elocutionists in the world." While there, Brown persuaded London philanthropist Julia Emery to donate half the necessary funds for a dormitory for Wilberforce University. The rest of the building was paid for by Andrew Carnegie. In 1913, the dormitory was named in honor of Keziah Emery , Julia Emery's mother.

In 1920, Hallie Brown was appointed president of the National Association of Colored Women and held the position until 1924. As president of the NACW, she supported the efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to defeat national and state legislation that would have prohibited interracial marriages. She also established a scholarship for girls unable to afford higher education and sat on the selection committee for many years. Eventually the scholarship was named in her honor. As well, Hallie Brown raised funds for the preservation of Frederick Douglass' home in Washington, D.C.

Hallie Brown was active in national and state politics. At various times, she was vice-president of the Ohio Council of Republican Woman, a member of the Advisory Committee of the National League of Women Voters, a member of the Colored Women's Department of the Republican National Committee, and chair of the executive committee of the Negro Women's National Republican League. In a letter to President Warren Harding in 1921, Brown complained about the opposition of white female federal employees to the appointment of an African-American registrar to the treasury. In her letter, she suggested that if the women were uncomfortable with the appointment, African-American women would be happy to replace them at their jobs at treasury.

Brown often spoke out against discrimination. She met with senators and President Harding in 1922, in an effort to secure anti-lynching legislation. At the Republican National Convention of 1924 in Cleveland, she spoke in support of Harding's nomination. This was probably the first time a woman of color addressed a national political convention. Subsequently, she supported Herbert Hoover's candidacy for the presidency.

In 1925, Hallie Brown delivered an angry speech to the All-American Music Festival of the International Council of Women in Washington, D.C. Initially the Daughters of the American Revolution refused the International Council's request to use Memorial Continental Hall. A compromise was reached, in which African-Americans would sit separately from the rest of the audience. In her speech, Brown protested the segregated seating. Unless the seating arrangements were changed, she threatened to withdraw African-American performers from the conference. Clearly furious, Brown declared that "this is a gathering of women of the world here and color finds no place in it." After her speech, 200 African-American performers refused to take part in the event, which was also boycotted by African-American members of the audience. The New York Times tersely reported that "feeling they have been discriminated against, a group of black women walked out of the International Council of Women's Conference."

That same year, Brown published Tales My Father Told Me and Other Stories. The collection, based on stories her father had heard while working on the river boats, contained highly romanticized accounts of women escaping from the bonds of slavery. In each tale, the narrator is Brown's father who contrives to rescue the women, though never through force. Brown also included a brief history of African-American spirituals, which she compared to Hebrew songs of the Diaspora. A year later, she published Our Women: Homespun Heroines and Women of Distinction, a collection of short biographies of 55 African-American and African-Canadian women. Among those featured were her mother Frances Jane Scroggins Brown, and her aunt, Eliza Anna Scroggins . Our Women proved to be one of the best early books on the subject.

In 1923, Hallie Brown retired from Wilberforce University due to illness. Never one to remain idle, however, she continued to speak on such diverse topics as education, black culture, the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, African-American women's rights, and the struggle of the black community for equal rights. Brown, who never married, lived in her ancestral Home-wood Cottage. On September 16, 1949, she died of coronary thrombosis in Wilberforce, Ohio, and is buried in the Brown family plot in Massie's Creek Cemetery.

As a noted educator, Brown's career as an elocutionist at Wilberforce University spanned 30 years. She did much to promote adult education for African-Americans, and her fund-raising efforts on behalf of Wilberforce led to the construction of much-needed facilities. For her efforts, the Hallie Quinn Brown Memorial Library at Central State University is named in her honor, as is the Hallie Q. Brown Community House in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Hallie Brown's spirituality underpinned a strong belief that social change could be accomplished through religion. Through education, clubs, and political lobbying, she sought to raise the status of African-American women. In public addresses, she linked the political emancipation of African-American women with the well being of the African-American community.

Brown led a rewarding and diverse life, which bridged pre-Civil War America with the modern period. On the political front, she was a tireless campaigner for equal rights, meeting kings and queens, prime ministers, presidents, congressional representatives, and senators.