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Hallie Q. Brown, Suffragist born

Hallie Q. Brown

This date marks the birth of Hallie Quinn Brown in 1850. She was a Black educator and elocutionist who pioneered the movement for Black women’s clubs in the United States.

Brown, the daughter of former slaves, was born in Pittsburgh, PA, and received a B.S. from Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1873. She then taught on plantations and in Mississippi and South Carolina public schools. After graduating from the Chautauqua Lecture School and teaching in Dayton and Alabama, Brown returned to Wilberforce to teach elocution. At that time, she began her extensive travels as an elocutionist and lecturer, speaking in Europe and the United States on the life of Blacks in America.

Brown helped to form the first British Chautauqua and lectured on behalf of the British Women’s Temperance Association in England. In the United States, she helped to found the earliest women’s clubs for Blacks and, from 1905 to 1912, served as president of the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs.

The Hallie Q. Brown Center of St. Paul, MN, was incorporated in 1929. It is one of Minnesota's oldest African American community service organizations.

She also helped to found the Colored Women’s League of Washington, D.C., a predecessor of the National Association of Colored Women. Hallie Q. Brown died September 16, 1949, in Wilberforce, Ohio.

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