"Brown was the daughter of former slaves. From 1864 she grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, and in 1870 she entered Wilberforce University in Ohio. After her graduation in 1873 she taught in plantation and public schools in Mississippi and South Carolina. In 1885–87 she was dean of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina, and during that period, in 1886, she graduated from the Chautauqua Lecture School. After four years of teaching public school in Dayton, Ohio, she served as a principal of Tuskegee Institute (1892–93) in Alabama under Booker T. Washington." (from Britannica)
"From 1893 to 1903, she served as professor of elocution at Wilberforce University, but served on a limited basis as she lectured and organized, traveling frequently. She helped promote the Colored Woman's League which became part of the National Association of Colored Women. In Great Britain, where she spoke to popular acclaim on African American life, she made several appearances before Queen Victoria, including tea with the Queen in July, 1889. She also spoke for temperance groups and represented the United States at the International Congress of Women, meeting in London in 1899. She took up the cause of woman suffrage and spoke on the topic of full citizenship for women as well as civil rights for black Americans. In 1925 she protested segregation of the Washington (DC) Auditorium being used for the All-American Musical Festival of the International Council of Women, threatening that all black performers would boycott the event if segregated seating were not ended. Two hundred black entertainers did boycott the event and black participants left in response to her speech." (from about.com)
"In addition to her lectures and recitals in the United States, Miss Hallie engaged in several extensive tours of Europe. Her active and passionate involvement in human rights placed her in the forefront of the struggle for black civil rights and the woman's suffrage movement from the late 1880s until her death in 1949.Miss Hallie is the author of several books, including Bits and Odds: A Choice Selection of Recitations (n.d.); Our Women: Past, Present, and Future (n.d.); Tales My Father Told (1925); andPen Pictures of Pioneers of Wilberforce (1938)." (from Central State University)
Hallie Quinn Brown is one of my favorite historical Black women because she was really the first Black women in the States to make a career as an elocutionist and she studied rhetoric from an African American perspective. What these excerpts leave out is the way in which she wrote public speaking (elocution) texts designed for African American students, using Black folk expressions and Black history to illustrate her points. Probably one of the first times in history that a woman authored an academic text from a Black perspective, but don't quote me on that.
For more on Hallie Quinn Brown, consult:
- Activist Rhetorics and American Higher Education, 1885-1937 by Susan Kates (who also has an article on Brown in College English)
- Black Pioneers in Communication Research by Ronald L. Jackson, II and Sonja M. Brown Givens
- Gilyard, Keith. "African American Contributions to Composition Studies." CCC 50.4 (1999): 626-644.
- Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction by Hallie Q. Brown
- McFarlin, Annjennette S. "Hallie Quinn Brown: Black Woman Elocutionist." The Southern Speech Communication Journal 46 (1980): 72-82.
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