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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 in the movement for Black women’s clubs in the United States.

The daughter of former slaves born in Pittsburgh, PA, Brown 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 in England, she lectured on behalf of the British Women’s Temperance Association. 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.

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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