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Drawing of Williana Burroughs from the 1933 election campaign, as published in *The Daily Worker.*

Williana "Liana" Jones Burroughs (January 2, 1882 – December 24, 1945) was an American teacher, communist political activist, and politician. She is best remembered as one of the first women to run for elective office in New York.

Biography

Early years

Williana Jones, known to family and friends as "Liane," was born on January 2, 1882, in Petersburg, Virginia.^[1] Her mother had formerly been a slave for 16 years,^[2] her father died when Williana was just four years old. Her widowed mother left Virginia for New York City, bringing Williana together with a sister and a brother (Gordon Jones), where she worked as a cook.^[1] Her mother proved unable to care for her children adequately, however, so Williana spent the next seven years in the Colored Orphan Asylum, located at the time on the corner of 143rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem.^[1] Her mother was able to retrieve her three children from the orphanage only when Williana was 11.

Williana attended public school in New York, where she was an excellent student. In 1909, Williana Jones married Charles Burroughs, a postal worker and actor.^[3] After graduation, she attended New York City Normal College, known today as Hunter College, where she achieved credentials to become a teacher.^[1] In 1910 she obtained her first teaching position, in charge of a first grade classroom.^[1]

In 1926, Burroughs moved to P.S. 48 in Queens, New York, where she taught first and second grade children.^[1] She was soon recruited into the New York City Teachers Union, in which she was active as part of the Communist-led "Rank and File caucus."^[4]

Political career

Williana Burroughs joined the Workers (Communist) Party in September 1926.^[5] She became active in the campaign for defense of the Scottsboro boys and was chairman of the Blumberg Defense Council, an organization formed to defend Isidore Blumberg, a teacher removed from the New York public schools system due to his political views.^[1]

The Communist Party sent Burroughs to the 6th World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in the summer of 1928 as a representative of the American Negro Labor Congress, a Communist Party auxiliary group.^[6] Burroughs traveled with her husband and her two youngest sons to the convention, with the boys remaining in the Soviet Union to attend school thereafter.^[7] Burroughs would not be reunited with them until 1937.^[8]

Burroughs made use of the pseudonym "Mary Adams" in the communist movement during the 1920s and 1930s, publishing an article for the party's daily newspaper under that name for May Day 1928.^[9] She became prominent within the party organization and was selected as an alternate delegate to the 6th National Convention of the Communist Party USA in March 1929.^[5]

Upon returning to the United States in January 1931, she resumed teaching. In 1933 Burroughs spoke out at a meeting of the New York City Board of Education, and in June 1933 Burroughs was dismissed from her post for "conduct unbecoming to a teacher and prejudicial to law and order."^[1]

After loss of her teaching position, Burroughs was the Communist Party's candidate for New York Comptroller in the fall of 1933 and the Communist Party's candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1934. She also ran the Harlem Worker's School from 1933 to 1934.

Burroughs was regarded as one of the CP's most effective witnesses during the public hearings over the 1935 Harlem riot.

She returned to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1937, the year of the Great Terror, where she worked as an announcer and editor for the English-language broadcasts of Radio Moscow, the international shortwave news service of the Soviet government.^[8] Burroughs remained in Moscow for virtually the rest of her life. In the spring of 1940 she made a request to return to the United States together with her sons but was persuaded to stay owing to the lack of capable Americans remaining in the USSR.^[10] The war intervened and Burroughs and her sons remained in Moscow until 1945, when she finally managed to return to New York with the younger boy.^[11]

Death and legacy

Williana Jones Burroughs died on December 24, 1945, at the Manhattan home of her friend Hermie Huiswoud, just two months after her return to the United States and barely more than a week before what would have been her 64th birthday.

Her son Charles Burroughs, the oldest of the boys who had been left in Moscow, retained his American citizenship and was inducted into the U.S. Army early in 1945. After his military service he returned to the United States and in 1961 co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, of which he remained curator until 1980. A Chicago high school is named after him.^[11]

Her granddaughter Carola Burroughs was interviewed by Yelena Demikovsky for the documentary Black Russians - The Red Experience, about African-Americans who moved to the Soviet Union.^{[citation needed]}

Footnotes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Philip Sterling, "Williana J. Burroughs: Ousted from New York Public School System, Now Communist Candidate for Comptroller," The Daily Worker, vol. 10, no. 232 (September 27, 1933), p. 5.
^ Jeffrey B. Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; p. 90.
^ Perry, Hubert Harrison, pg. 91.
^ Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011; p. 59.
^ ^a ^b "Files of the Communist Party USA in the Comintern Archives," Russian State Archive for Social-Political History (RGASPI), f. 515, op. 1, d. 1599, l. 1. Available on microfilm, reel 122.
^ Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998; p. 264.
^ Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995; p. 199.
^ ^a ^b Solomon, The Cry was Unity, p. 265.
^ Perry, Hubert Harrison, p. 437, fn. 45.
^ Ross to Dimitrov, September 14, 1942, RGASPI f. 495, op. 73, d. 152. Translated and published in full in Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pg. 201.
^ ^a ^b Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, p. 200, fn. 4.

Works

(as "Mary Adams"): "Record of Revolts in Negro Workers' Past," The Daily Worker, May 1, 1928.
The Road to Liberation for the Negro People. Contributor with A.W. Berry; Benjamin J. Davis; James W. Ford; Benjamin Carreathers; Angelo Herndon; William L. Patterson; Harry Haywood; Timothy Holmes; Manning Johnson; Richard B. Moore; William Taylor; Louise Thompson; Maude White; Henry Winston; Merrill Work. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1939.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+{{Short description|American teacher and politician (1882–1945)}}
 [[File:Burroughs-Williana-1933.jpg|thumb|right|280px|Drawing of Williana Burroughs from the 1933 election campaign, as published in ''The Daily Worker.'']]
-'''Williana "Liane" Jones Burroughs''' (1882–1945) was an American teacher, [[communist]] [[political activist]], and [[politician]]. She is best remembered as one of the first [[African-American]] women to run for elective office in [[New York state|New York]].
+'''Williana "Liana" Jones Burroughs''' (January 2, 1882 – December 24, 1945) was an American teacher, [[communist]] [[political activist]], and [[politician]]. She is best remembered as one of the first  women to run for elective office in [[New York state|New York]].
 ==Biography==
 ===Early years===
-Williana (Liane, Liana) Jones was born in 1882 in [[Petersburg, Virginia]].<ref name="Sterling">Philip Sterling, "Williana J. Burroughs: Ousted from New York Public School System, Now Communist Candidate for Comptroller," ''The Daily Worker,'' vol. 10, no. 232 (September 27, 1933), p. 5.</ref> Her mother had formerly been a slave for 16 years,<ref>Jeffrey B. Perry, ''Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; p. 90.</ref> her father died when Williana was just 4. Her widowed mother left [[Virginia]] for [[New York City]], bringing Williana together with her siblings, Gordon and Nellie.  She found work as a live-in cook, but no children were allowed, so Williana, Gordon and Nellie were enrolled in the Colored Orphan Asylum, a charitable institution founded by Quakers and primarily run, by the late 19th century, by wealthy New York society women and men and located at the time on the corner of 143rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue in [[Harlem]].  Nellie soon died of pneumonia, but Williana and Gordon spent the next seven years at the Asylum, visited occasionally by their mother and others.<ref>''Colored Orphan Asylum Records, Vol. 26: Admissions and Short Histories, 1867-1888.'' New York Historical Society, New York City.</ref> Their mother retrieved them when Williana was 11; the three settled on the West Side of Manhattan.
+Williana Jones, known to family and friends as "Liane," was born on January 2, 1882, in [[Petersburg, Virginia]].<ref name="Sterling">Philip Sterling, "Williana J. Burroughs: Ousted from New York Public School System, Now Communist Candidate for Comptroller," ''The Daily Worker,'' vol. 10, no. 232 (September 27, 1933), p. 5.</ref> Her mother had formerly been a slave for 16 years,<ref>Jeffrey B. Perry, ''Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; p. 90.</ref> her father died when Williana was just four years old. Her widowed mother left [[Virginia]] for [[New York City]], bringing Williana together with a sister and a brother (Gordon Jones), where she worked as a cook.<ref name="Sterling" /> Her mother proved unable to care for her children adequately, however, so Williana spent the next seven years in the Colored Orphan Asylum, located at the time on the corner of 143rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue in [[Harlem]].<ref name="Sterling" /> Her mother was able to retrieve her three children from the orphanage only when Williana was 11.
+Williana attended [[Public school (government funded)|public school]] in New York, where she was an excellent student. In 1909, Williana Jones married Charles Burroughs, a postal worker and actor.<ref>Perry, ''Hubert Harrison,'' pg. 91.</ref> After graduation, she attended New York City Normal College, known today as [[Hunter College]], where she achieved credentials to become a teacher.<ref name="Sterling" /> In 1910 she obtained her first teaching position, in charge of a [[first grade]] classroom.<ref name="Sterling" />
-Williana attended [[Public school (government funded)|public school]] in New York, where she was an excellent student. After graduation, she attended New York City Normal College, known today as [[Hunter College]], where she achieved credentials to become a teacher, graduating in 1903. She was the only African American in her class of approximately 50. Her grades put her near the top of her class, and her classmates noted, "She is not afraid to state her own convictions, and what is more, she'll stick to them, at any time and under any circumstances."<ref>Record of Students, 1899-1900. "The Wistarion," 1903. Hunter College Archives and Special Collections, New York City.</ref> Between 1903 and 1909 she taught first- and second-graders at P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side; she was the only African American teacher at this school. Many of her students were the children of recent Jewish immigrants, and she began to specialize in teaching English-language learners.<ref>Directory of Teachers in the Public Schools, Board of Education of the City of New York, 1905-1908. Meeting Minutes, Journal of the Board of Directors of the City of New York, June 28, 1933; pp. 110-111. Municipal Archive, New York City.</ref> In 1909, probably pregnant with her daughter Alison, she married her longtime beau Charles Burroughs, a one-time student of W. E. B. Du Bois and a renowned Shakespearian "reader" who earned a steady income from the U.S. Post Office. She left her teaching position and took her husband's [[surname|last name]], as was the custom in the day.<ref>Perry, ''Hubert Harrison,'' p. 91.</ref> In 1910 she obtained her first teaching position, in charge of a [[first-grade]] classroom.<ref name="Sterling" />
-In 1925, having in the intervening years raised four children, Burroughs returned to teaching, first as a substitute in Flushing and then as a teacher at P.S. 48 in Jamaica, Queens, where she again worked with English-language learners, this time from Italy and the Caribbean.<ref>New York Board of Education Series 763, Nationalities Surveys 1931-47, P.S. 48; Municipal Archive, New York City.</ref><ref name="Social-Political History PI">Russian State Archive for Social-Political History (RGASPI), personal file on "Williana Burroughs / Mary Adams," f. 495, op. 261, d. 3497, Moscow.</ref> She was soon recruited into the [[New York City Teachers Union]], in which she was active as part of the Communist-led "Rank and File caucus."<ref>Clarence Taylor, ''Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2011; p. 59.</ref>
+In 1926, Burroughs moved to [[P.S. 48]] in [[Queens, New York]], where she taught first and second grade children.<ref name="Sterling" /> She was soon recruited into the [[New York City Teachers Union]], in which she was active as part of the Communist-led "Rank and File caucus."<ref>Clarence Taylor, ''Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union.'' New York: Columbia University Press, 2011; p. 59.</ref>
 ===Political career===
-Williana Burroughs joined the [[Communist Party, USA|Workers (Communist) Party]]<!---note that this is the correct name of the organization for this year---> in September 1926.<ref name=CIFilm>"Files of the Communist Party USA in the Comintern Archives," Russian State Archive for Social-Political History (RGASPI), f. 515, op. 1, d. 1599, l. 1. Available on microfilm, reel 122.</ref> Owing to the tenuous nature of her employment position — a black woman public educator — Burroughs did not make public her Communist Party membership until years later, after she had already lost her job.<ref>Taylor, ''Reds at the Blackboard,'' p. 58.</ref> Instead, Burroughs made use of the [[pseudonym]] "Mary Adams" in her activities in the communist movement during the 1920s and early 1930s. Between 1928 and 1935, she published about two dozen articles in ''The Negro Champion'' (1928–29), the ''Harlem Liberator'' (1933–34) and the more widely circulating ''[[Daily Worker]]'' under her own name and her pseudonym.<ref>Perry, ''Hubert Harrison,'' p. 437, fn. 45.</ref>
+Williana Burroughs joined the [[Communist Party USA|Workers (Communist) Party]]<!---note that this is the correct name of the organization for this year---> in September 1926.<ref name=CIFilm>"Files of the Communist Party USA in the Comintern Archives," Russian State Archive for Social-Political History (RGASPI), f. 515, op. 1, d. 1599, l. 1. Available on microfilm, reel 122.</ref> She became active in the campaign for defense of the [[Scottsboro boys]] and was chairman of the Blumberg Defense Council, an organization formed to defend Isidore Blumberg, a teacher removed from the New York public schools system due to his political views.<ref name="Sterling" />
-Burroughs and her two youngest children, Charlie and Neal, visited the Soviet Union in July, 1928. She attended the [[6th World Congress of the Comintern|6th World Congress]] of the [[Communist International]] in [[Moscow]] as a representative of the [[American Negro Labor Congress]], a Communist Party auxiliary group, as a non-voting delegate,<ref name="Solomon264">Mark Solomon, ''The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36.'' Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998; p. 264.</ref> and also toured schools and summer camps. By the end of the tour, she had decided to place Charlie and Neal in Soviet boarding schools.  She visited her sons in the Soviet Union in 1929, after attending the Anti-Imperialist League Conference in Frankfurt.
+The Communist Party sent Burroughs to the [[6th World Congress of the Comintern|6th World Congress]] of the [[Communist International]] in [[Moscow]] in the summer of 1928 as a representative of the [[American Negro Labor Congress]], a Communist Party auxiliary group.<ref name="Solomon264">Mark Solomon, ''The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36.'' Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1998; p. 264.</ref> Burroughs traveled with her husband and her two youngest sons to the convention, with the boys remaining in the [[Soviet Union]] to attend school thereafter.<ref>Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, ''The Secret World of American Communism.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995; p. 199.</ref> Burroughs would not be reunited with them until 1937.<ref name="Solomon265">Solomon, ''The Cry was Unity,'' p. 265.</ref>
-Burroughs was also an alternate delegate to the 6th National Convention of the Communist Party USA in March 1929.<ref name=CIFilm />
+Burroughs made use of the [[pseudonym]] "Mary Adams" in the communist movement during the 1920s and 1930s, publishing an article for the party's daily newspaper under that name for [[May Day]] 1928.<ref>Perry, ''Hubert Harrison,'' p. 437, fn. 45.</ref> She became prominent within the party organization and was selected as an alternate delegate to the 6th National Convention of the Communist Party USA in March 1929.<ref name=CIFilm />
+Upon returning to the United States in January 1931, she resumed teaching. In 1933 Burroughs spoke out at a meeting of the New York City Board of Education, and in June 1933 Burroughs was dismissed from her post for "conduct unbecoming to a teacher and prejudicial to law and order."<ref name="Sterling" />
-In 1930, having earned a year-long teaching sabbatical, she told those near her she was going to Germany and instead headed to the Soviet Union, where worked as a junior functionary ("praktikant") in the Communist International and saw her sons regularly.<ref name="Social-Political History PI"/><ref>"Jamaica News and Social Briefs," ''New York Amsterdam News,'' February 12, 1930, p. 14.</ref> Upon returning in January 1931, she resumed teaching, and also became active in the campaign for defense of the [[Scottsboro boys]] and was chairman of the Blumberg Defense Council, an organization formed to defend Isidore Blumberg, a teacher removed from the New York public schools system due to his political views.<ref name="Sterling" />
-In 1933 Burroughs spoke out at a meeting of the New York City Board of Education, and  in June 1933 Burroughs was dismissed from her post for "conduct unbecoming to a teacher and prejudicial to law and order."<ref name="Sterling" />
 After loss of her teaching position, Burroughs was the Communist Party's candidate for [[New York Comptroller]] in the fall of 1933 and the Communist Party's candidate for [[Lieutenant Governor of New York]] in 1934. She also ran the Harlem Worker's School from 1933 to 1934.
@@ Line 28: / Line 27: @@
 Burroughs was regarded as one of the CP's most effective witnesses during the public hearings over the [[1935 Harlem riot]].
+She returned to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1937, the year of the [[Great Purge|Great Terror]], where she worked as an announcer and editor for the English-language broadcasts of [[Radio Moscow]], the international [[shortwave]] news service of the Soviet government.<ref name="Solomon265" /> Burroughs remained in Moscow for virtually the rest of her life. In the spring of 1940 she made a request to return to the United States together with her sons but was persuaded to stay owing to the lack of capable Americans remaining in the USSR.<ref name="RGASPI">Ross to Dimitrov, September 14, 1942, RGASPI f. 495, op. 73, d. 152. Translated and published in full in Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, ''The Secret World of American Communism,'' pg. 201.</ref> The war intervened and Burroughs and her sons remained in Moscow until 1945, when she finally managed to return to New York with the younger boy.<ref name="Secret200">Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, ''The Secret World of American Communism,'' p. 200, fn. 4.</ref>
-She returned to the Soviet Union in October 1935, on the same boat as the African American actress Frances Williams and the prolific leftist writer Anna Louise Strong.<ref>Frances Williams,“To Hell With Bandannas.” Interviewed by Karen Anne Mason and Richard Candida Smith. University of California Oral History Program. Los Angeles: Regents of the University of California, 1997.</ref><ref>Francis Williams [sic: Frances]. Interview with Larry Clark, 4 September 1986. TS. John Oliver Killens papers, Box 41, Folder 2. Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.</ref> She began working as a copyreader at the English-language newspaper ''Moscow News,'' and in 1937 joined the staff at the All-Union Radio Committee as an announcer and editor for the English-language broadcasts of [[Radio Moscow]], the international [[shortwave]] news service of the Soviet government.<ref name="Solomon265">Solomon, ''The Cry was Unity,'' p. 265.</ref>
-In 1937, she was joined by her son Charlie, who soon graduated from high school and worked at various places, including a circus and the Stalin Auto Factory. Williana Burroughs hoped to guarantee her sons' future and then return to the United States; she began suffering health problems and asked to be relieved from her radio duties in 1940 and again in 1942.<ref name="RGASPI">Ross to Dimitrov, September 14, 1942, RGASPI f. 495, op. 73, d. 152. Translated and published in full in Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, ''The Secret World of American Communism,'' p. 201.</ref> However, she was told that she was needed, given the scarcity of native English speakers in Moscow during the war, and her requests were denied. In the meantime, her husband Charles died a suicide in August 1941, and the family's eight-bedroom home in Jamaica, Long Island, was lost.
-Burroughs and her sons remained in Moscow until 1945, when she finally managed to return to New York with the younger boy. The FBI was on high alert: [[J. Edgar Hoover]] hoped to detain her, and had his agents watching boats arriving at New York Harbor.  However, Williana and Neal arrived at Baltimore.<ref name="Secret200">Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, ''The Secret World of American Communism,'' p. 200, fn. 4.</ref>
 ===Death and legacy===
-Williana Jones Burroughs died on December 24, 1945, just two months after her return to the United States, at the Manhattan home of her friend Hermie Huiswoud.
+Williana Jones Burroughs died on December 24, 1945, at the Manhattan home of her friend Hermie Huiswoud, just two months after her return to the United States and barely more than a week before what would have been her 64th birthday.
 Her son Charles Burroughs, the oldest of the boys who had been left in Moscow, retained his American citizenship and was inducted into the [[U.S. Army]] early in 1945. After his military service he returned to the United States and in 1961 co-founded the [[DuSable Museum of African American History]] in [[Chicago]], of which he remained curator until 1980. A Chicago [[high school]] is named after him.<ref name="Secret200" />
-Her granddaughter Carola got interviewed by Yelena Demikovsky for the [[documentary]] ''Black Russians - The Red Experience'', about African-Americans who moved to the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://en.rian.ru/art_living/20130117/178845106/US_Filmmaker_on_the_Trail_of_Soviet_Black_Americans.html |title=''US Filmmaker on the Trail of Soviet Black Americans'' |work=[[RIA Novosti]] |date=17 January 2013}}</ref>
+Her granddaughter Carola Burroughs was interviewed by Yelena Demikovsky for the [[documentary]] ''Black Russians - The Red Experience'', about African-Americans who moved to the Soviet Union.{{cn|date=April 2023}}
 ==See also==
@@ Line 52: / Line 47: @@
 * (as "Mary Adams"): "Record of Revolts in Negro Workers' Past," ''The Daily Worker,'' May 1, 1928.
-* ''The Road to Liberation for the Negro People.'' Contributor with A.W. Berry; [[Benjamin J. Davis]]; [[James W. Ford]]; Benjamin Carreathers; [[Angelo Herndon]]; [[William L. Patterson]]; [[Harry Haywood]]; Timothy Holmes; Manning Johnson; Richard B. Moore; William Taylor; Louise Thompson; Maude White; [[Henry Winston]]; Merrill Work. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1939.
+* ''The Road to Liberation for the Negro People.'' Contributor with A.W. Berry; [[Benjamin J. Davis]]; [[James W. Ford]]; Benjamin Carreathers; [[Angelo Herndon]]; [[William L. Patterson]]; [[Harry Haywood]]; Timothy Holmes; Manning Johnson; Richard B. Moore; William Taylor; Louise Thompson; [[Maude White]]; [[Henry Winston]]; Merrill Work. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1939.
 ==Further reading==
@@ Line 58: / Line 53: @@
 * Erik McDuffie, ''Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism.'' Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
-{{Persondata <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]]. -->
-| NAME              = Burroughs, Williana
-| ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
-| SHORT DESCRIPTION =
-| DATE OF BIRTH     = 1882
-| PLACE OF BIRTH    =
-| DATE OF DEATH     = 1945
-| PLACE OF DEATH    =
-}}
 {{DEFAULTSORT:Burroughs, Williana}}
 [[Category:1882 births]]
@@ Line 72: / Line 58: @@
 [[Category:American communists]]
 [[Category:American Marxists]]
+[[Category:Women Marxists]]
+[[Category:African-American Marxists]]
 [[Category:Members of the Communist Party USA]]
-[[Category:African-Americans' civil rights activists]]
+[[Category:Activists for African-American civil rights]]
+[[Category:American civil rights activists]]
+[[Category:American expatriates in the Soviet Union]]
+[[Category:20th-century African-American women politicians]]
+[[Category:20th-century African-American politicians]]
+[[Category:20th-century American women politicians]]
+[[Category:African-American communists]]
+[[Category:Hunter College alumni]]