Hallie Quinn Brown 1850 – 1949

Biography

Educator. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was an African American educator and elocutionist who pioneered in the movement for Black women’s clubs. Educated at Wilberforce University Ohio, she taught on plantations and in the public schools of Mississippi and South Carolina. In the 1870s, she traveled as an elocutionist and lecturer, speaking in Europe as well as the United States on topics of the life of Blacks in America. She helped form the first British Chautauqua, England and lectured on behalf of the British Women’s Temperance Association. In the US, she founded the earliest women’s clubs for Blacks to include the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women’s Club, Colored Women’s League of Washington, D.C. and National Association of Colored Women. (bio by: John “J-Cat” Griffith)