Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1994 Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs: Educator, Artist, Author, Founder, and Civic Leader Strong Carline Evone Williams Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Education Commons Recommended Citation Williams, Strong Carline Evone, "Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs: Educator, Artist, Author, Founder, and Civic Leader" (1994). Dissertations. 3477. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3477 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1994 Strong Carline Evone Williams LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO MARGARET TAYLOR GOSS BURROUGHS: EDUCATOR, ARTIST, AUTHOR, FOUNDER, AND CIVIC LEADER A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND POLICY STUDIES BY CARLINE EVONE WILLIAMS STRONG CHICAGO, ILLINOIS MAY 1994 Copyright by Carline Evone Williams Strong, 1994 All rights reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I began writing this dissertation, I was filled with feelings of vacillation and ambivalance. My directors, Dr. Steven Miller and Dr. Janis Fine, were instrumental in alleviating these concerns. Consequently, feelings of uncertanity were supplanted by encouragement, support and empathy. The professional expertise rendered by the other committee members Dr. Gerald Gutek and Dr. Joan Smith has been valued and appreciated. I want to acknowledge the unselfish support, through prayers and understanding, extended by my co-workers, friends and family. Specifically, I must acknowledge the technical expertise provided by my sister Dr. Levonne Williams. Her computer literacy was invaluable. Additionally, I must thank Mrs. Josie Whiting Smith, my co­ worker and friend, for sharing her expertise. I also want to express sincere gratitude to my parents, Otha and Catherine Williams, who instilled within me a drive and comittment to self actualization. I regret my father passed away recently and did not see the dissertation completed. He was an integral enity in the whole process. The completion of the paper would not have been iii possible without the generous cooperation of Dr. Margaret Burroughs and the staff at the DuSable Museum of African American History. Dr. Burroughs selflessly opened her life as well as her home to me. She made her private papers available for investigation. Teresa Christopher, Ramon Price and the museum staff were extremely helpful, cordial, and tolerant. Lastly, yet foremost, I must acknowledge the presence of the God spirit in my life and the avid support of my prayer partner and friend Sandra Webb Booker. Through prayer and spiritual guidance this dissertation became manifest. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii LIST OF TABLES vi Chapter I. THE EARLY YEARS ...........•................... 1 II. COMING OF AGE ........•. 63 III. BURROUGHS: AS EDUCATOR, ARTIST, AND WRITER •... 92 IV. THE FOUNDING OF THE DUSABLE MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMER I CAN HI STORY . • • . • . 1 71 V. BURROUGHS: CIVIC WORK, TRAVELS AND AWARDS ..... 252 VI. EPILOGUE. • . • . 2 8 6 Appendix A. 295 B. 300 C. 306 BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 VITA 319 V LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Museum Attendance ..•...••.•................•.. 197 2. Attendance ........•...•....................... 201 3. Attendance Figures For Group Tours From December 10, 1961 to July 7, 1962 ..•.......... 203 vi CHAPTER I THE EARLY YEARS The Setting When Margaret Taylor was born Woodrow Wilson was at the helm of leadership in the United States as chief executive officer. Woodrow Wilson was the nation's twenty-eighth president serving from 1913-1923. When Wilson was first initiated into the political arena as the governor of New Jersey in 1910, the majority of the American populace lived and worked on farms. By 1917, when Margaret Taylor was born, he had been re-elected as President and in April of the same year he had asked Congress for a declaration of war bringing the nation into World War I. By this time fewer people were making their living from the land. Industry had made its debut on the continent. By 1920, at the end of his term, agriculture was being replaced with commercial entrepreneurship and industry. Life was rapidly changing for the American people. In 1910, for example, there were approximately 500,000 motorists. One decade later the roadways were being traversed by more than eight million drivers. Skyscrapers silhouetted the skies the urban areas and electricity was helping to make the 2 lives of Americans more comfortable. 1 When Margaret was only one year old the phonograph record made its debut. Motion pictures had gained popularity along with jazz music. The American culture was taking on a new complexion. World War I had a profound effect on social life in America. There were numerous and evident changes, prohibition of liquor, and women were enfranchised through the fourteenth amendment. There was a great migration of blacks from the South to the North. In order to get the Federal Reserve Act passed, President Wilson had to "concede special credit statues for notes secured by crops or farm land." 2 At the time, usuary interest rates were being assessed farmers on mortgages. Wilson compromised with Congress in mid October, 1919, and conceded there could be special private land banks from which farmers could negotiate a loan at less exorbitant rates. The farmers advocated a plan for government land banks but Wilson staunchly opposed the proposal. "I have a very deep conviction that it is unwise and unjustifiable to extend the credit of the Government to a single class of the community3 ". This posture affected the Taylor family along 1John Caughey and Ernest R. May, A History of the United States, (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1964), 423-453. 2 Ibid., 433. 3 Ibid., 433. 3 with friends and neighbors. The Taylors were unable to purchase additional properties, which might have expanded the family's meager land holdings. Friends who worked the land as sharecroppers lost hope of becoming land owners. Wilson's ideology and policy of the New Freedom was well known in the black communities. No where perhaps were the limits of the New Freedom more apparent than in the administration's attitude toward negroes. Wilson, a number of members of the cabinet, and a majority of Democratic leaders in Congress were southerners, at least in origin. Not long after taking office, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Postmaster General began systematically placing negroes in separate offices and fitting out separate lunchrooms and rest rooms for them. Little or no restraint was placed on officials outside the District of Columbia who pursued such a policy more brazenly. The Collector of International Revenue in Atlanta declared 'There are not government positions for negroes in the South. A negro's place was in the cornfields.' 4 When protest arose from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, northern reformers and newspaper editors, Wilson responded "I do approve of the segregation that is being attempted .... I think it is distinctly to the advantage of the colored people themselves. 115 Note this was the same person who opposed any policy that favored a special group. This, then, was the atmosphere of the nation into which Margaret Taylor was born. This was the legacy she was to inherit and throughout her life respond to through very diverse and poignant channels. 4 Ibid. , 434. 5 Ibid., 434. 4 Early Years in st. Rose On 1 November 1917, Christopher Alexander Taylor and octovia Pierre Taylor became parents to a baby daughter whom they named Margaret Victoria (Victoria after her maternal grandmother and Margaret after her father's oldest sister). The Taylors belonged to the working class like the preponderance of the populace in this small obscure village of st. Rose in the parish of St. Charles. 6 Their house was something of an architectural forerunner of the modern duplex. It was built of clapboard and each unit consisted of two rooms. The two units shared a gallery or porch and had been built by the local men themselves. Several of the more prominent members of the community lived in larger white houses on the main street, Big Street. They were not built by the local farmers but by contractors and these houses were adorned with shuttered windows. st. Rose is an obscure village about eighteen miles outside of New Orleans but could easily be missed because it is not designated on the map of the area. Before it became the village of St. Rose, the area had been a vast plantation for sugar cane. Margaret's father's ancestors, the Taylors, had been slaves on these plantations. After the Emancipation, it had been divided into small parcels. These were then sold to the former slaves from the area. In 1919 6Margaret Burroughs "Retrospect," TMs, 1965, Personal files, Dr. Margaret Burroughs, Chicago, 1. 5 a number of the tenants pooled their resources and bought the parcel of land that became known as st. Rose. The community was comprised entirely of people of color with the exception of white people who owned the General Store on the main street. some of the land was owned by the families who worked the land and some was held in joint tenancy where the landowner would reap part of the profits from the land and the sharecroppers would earn a percentage of the profits. There was another group who neither owned or rented the land, rather they worked entirely for the landowner. Most of the members in this group always seemed to be in debt to the owners and worked just to survive from one harvest to another1 • Although some of the men worked at the oil wells, Mr.