Hallie Quinn Brown

Notable people · Educator · Civil Rights · Suffrage

Hallie Quinn Brown

Wilberforce-trained elocutionist, teacher and clubwoman who lectured for temperance, women's suffrage and civil rights on two continents and led the National Association of Colored Women from 1920 to 1924.

Born March 10, 1850, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died September 16, 1949, Wilberforce

Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

At a glance

Born: March 10, 1850, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (some sources give 1845 or 1849) source
Died: September 16, 1949, Wilberforce (Greene County) source
Buried: Massies Creek Cemetery, Cedarville (Greene County) source
Also known as: Hallie Q. Brown
Education: Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, OH, 1868-1873, B.S. 1873; later M.S.
Known as: Educator, Civil Rights, Suffrage
Organizations: National Association of Colored Women, Wilberforce University

Life story

Hallie Quinn Brown was born in Pittsburgh to parents who had been enslaved. Wikipedia gives her birth year as 1845 or 1850; she lived to 1949. Her brother Jeremiah became an Ohio politician.

The family moved to Canada and then to Ohio. She attended Wilberforce University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1873, and later a master's degree, the first woman to earn one there.

She taught in South Carolina and Mississippi, served as dean at Allen University in the mid-1880s and as principal at Tuskegee Institute (1892-93). She became a noted public speaker and lectured in London in 1895.

She wrote books on speaking and on Black women's history. She died at Wilberforce in 1949 and is buried in Cedarville. Wilberforce's Hallie Q. Brown library and a Saint Paul community center carry her name.

Ohio ties

Wilberforce (1868-1949)
Wilberforce University student (B.S. 1873) and professor of elocution from 1893; family home 'Homewood Cottage' Greene County · source
Dayton (late 1870s)
public school teacher for four years Montgomery County · source
Marion (1920)
first woman to speak from Warren G. Harding's front porch during his campaign Marion County · source
Cleveland (1924)
spoke at the Republican National Convention, held at the Public Auditorium Cuyahoga County · source
Xenia (1926)
her collection Homespun Heroines was published by the Aldine Publishing Company of Xenia Greene County · source
Cedarville (1949)
burial in Massies Creek Cemetery Greene County · source

Timeline

1850 Born on 10 March in Pittsburgh. The year is disputed, with dates from 1845 to 1850 in use. source
1864 The family moved to a farm near Chatham, Ontario. source
1868 Began her course of study at Wilberforce. source
1870 Her family settled in Wilberforce, Ohio. source
1873 Graduated from Wilberforce University with a Bachelor of Science. source
1875 Left her teaching post at Yazoo City, Mississippi, and returned North because of the violence of 1874-75. source
1880 Published Bits and Odds: A Choice Selection of Recitations. source
1885 Became dean of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, serving until 1887. source
1888 Made the first of several speaking and singing tours abroad to raise money for Wilberforce. source
1892 Became lady principal (dean of women) at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute for the 1892-93 year. source
1893 Appointed professor of elocution at Wilberforce University. source
1893 Helped Anna Julia Cooper and others found the Colored Women's League in Washington. source
1895 Spoke at the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union convention in London. source
1899 Represented the United States at the International Congress of Women in London. source
1905 Became president of the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, serving until 1912. source
1920 Became president of the National Association of Colored Women, serving until 1924. source
1920 Campaigned for Warren G. Harding and was the first woman chosen to speak from his front porch. source
1924 Spoke at the Republican National Convention and then directed campaign work among Black women for Calvin Coolidge. source
1925 In May gave a widely reported speech against segregation to the International Council of Women in Washington. source
1926 Published Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction, about 60 sketches of Black women, in Xenia. source
1949 Died on 16 September at Wilberforce, aged about 99. source
1973 Homewood Cottage on Brush Row Road, Wilberforce, was listed on the National Register on 18 January. source
1974 Homewood Cottage was destroyed in the 3-4 April tornado outbreak that struck Xenia and Wilberforce, and it was removed from the Register that June. source

What Hallie is known for

President, Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs 1905-1912
President, National Association of Colored Women 1920-1924
Principal at Tuskegee 1892-93
Bits and Odds (1880)
First Lessons in Public Speaking (1920)
Tales My Father Told Me (1925)
Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction (1926)

Stories

Speeches to the cows

An 1893 sketch of Brown describes her as a girl of eight or nine on the family farm near Chatham, Ontario. She would gallop a colt bareback down the lane to the pasture, milk the cows, then climb onto a stump and deliver speeches to the cows, sheep and birds, with separate addresses for the lambs and ducklings. She thought nobody knew until a farm hand caught her at it. She later called these her 'ridiculous capers', but the writer saw in them the training of one of the best-known elocutionists of the day.

Source

Cotton-seed plaster

After graduating in 1873 Brown went South to teach freedpeople. In Mississippi her school was a log house with open cracks and no window glass. When the authorities ignored her requests for repairs, she rode a mule to the gin mill with two of her older pupils on another. They brought back cotton seed and mixed it with earth into a mortar, and she plastered the gaps with her own hands. She later taught at Yazoo City until the violence of 1874-75 drove her back North, to a teaching job in Dayton.

Source

A station on Hazel Street

In Homespun Heroines Brown wrote about her own mother, Frances Jane Scroggins Brown. As a young woman in Cincinnati, Frances met a woman just off a riverboat who was running from her enslaver and hid her in a friend's house. The woman was passed over back fences to safety and later reached Canada, and the two met again in England forty years later. After Frances married Thomas Arthur Brown, who had bought his own freedom, their house on Hazel Street in Pittsburgh became an Underground Railroad station. One winter they hid a mother and five children, and Frances kept it secret even from her own family. The family later moved to a farm near Chatham, Ontario, where a fire killed Hallie's sister Mary. They named the cottage they rebuilt there Homewood Cottage, and later gave the same name to their home in Wilberforce.

Source

Fighting the 'mammy' monument

As president of the National Association of Colored Women (1920-1924), Brown fought a proposal by the United Daughters of the Confederacy for a monument in Washington to the faithful 'mammy'. She wrote that enslaved women were brutalized, 'the victims of white man's caprice and lust', and that the baby torn from such a woman's arms was often her enslaver's child. With Mary Church Terrell, clubwomen and the NAACP organized against it, and the bill died in the House of Representatives.

Source

Honors and things named for them

Ohio Women's Hall of Fame (1991)
Hallie Q. Brown Memorial Library, Central State University
Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, Saint Paul, Minnesota (1929)

Named for Hallie Quinn Brown

Hallie Q. Brown Memorial Library, Central State University (Wilberforce, Greene County) source
Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (founded 1929) (Saint Paul, Minnesota) source

Family

father: Thomas Arthur Brown
mother: Frances Jane Scroggins
brother: Jeremiah Brown

Sites to know

Homes, graves, markers, museums and monuments; the numbered ones are on the map.

1 Ohio Historical Marker 17-29, Hallie Quinn Brown (south side of the Hallie Q. Brown Memorial Library)
Central State University, Maplewood Avenue, Wilberforce Greene County · source
2 Hallie Q. Brown grave, Massies Creek Cemetery
Cedarville Greene County · source
Homewood Cottage site (NRHP 73002286, destroyed 1974) (demolished)
Brush Row Road, Wilberforce, Xenia Township Greene County · source
3 Harding Home, Marion, from whose front porch she spoke in the 1920 campaign
380 Mount Vernon Avenue, Marion Marion County · source

Places in Ohio to see

Massies Creek Cemetery (burial) (grave)
Cedarville, Greene County ZIP 45314 (approximate) · Cedarville · Greene County · official page
Hallie Q. Brown Memorial Library (museum)
1400 Brush Row Rd, Wilberforce, Greene County ZIP 45384 · Greene County

Ohio places

Where Hallie Quinn Brown was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

School: Wilberforce, Greene County (Wilberforce University) ZIP 45384 · Greene County
Lived: Wilberforce, Greene County (Hallie Q. Brown House (address not verified)) ZIP 45384 · Greene County

Myths and corrections

Things often said about Hallie Quinn Brown, and what the record shows.

Often said Brown was principal of Tuskegee Institute under Booker T. Washington (Wikipedia, Britannica and others).

The record Washington was Tuskegee's principal. Gale's American Women Writers says that in 1892 Brown accepted the post of 'Lady Principal', a dean of women, and she was appointed professor of elocution at Wilberforce the next year. source

Often said Hallie Quinn Brown was born on 15 March 1845.

The record Her birth year has never been settled. Gale's American Women Writers gives 'circa 10 March 1845', relying on A. S. McFarlin's 1975 dissertation, which is titled '1845 (?)-1949'. Find a Grave gives 10 March 1850, and the NPS and the Ohio marker say 'ca. 1850'. Wikipedia's 15 March differs from the 10 March given elsewhere. source

Often said She earned a Master of Science at Wilberforce as the first woman to do so.

The record Gale's American Women Writers lists it as an honorary M.S. (1890), alongside an honorary LL.D. (1936). Other sources date it to 1887, and I found no contemporary record that she was the first woman to receive it. source

Birth year is uncertain: Wikipedia lists 1845 or 1850, so her age at death (99-104) is also uncertain.

Documents

Primary records: patents, letters, court and government files, nominations and old county histories, each at the archive that holds it.

Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction, compiled and edited by Hallie Q. Brown (Aldine Publishing, Xenia), full electronic text 1926, Documenting the American South, UNC-Chapel Hill
L. A. Scruggs, Women of Distinction: Remarkable in Works and Invincible in Character, chapter III, 'Miss Hallie Quinn Brown' 1893, State Library of North Carolina (Internet Archive)

Pictures

Free to use with the credit shown. Select a picture for the original and its license.

Public domain
Public domain
Title: Hallie Quinn Brown, educator and activist, cape draped on shoulder and wearing gloves] / Biddle, Xenia,...
Public domain
Hallie Brown, giving a speech at Poro College in 1920.
Public domain
Thirteen Leaders of American Colored Women. Back row, Miss R. J. Dunbar, Mrs. M. F. Warin, Mrs. M. E Joshenber...
Public domain
Hallie Quinn Brown
Public domain
Hallie Q. Brown and nieces Frances and Lois Brown in 1913
Unknown author / CC BY-SA 4.0