Brown had since childhood held an interest in public speaking In 1895 Hallie Q. Brown addressed an audience at the Women’s Christian Temperance Union Conference in London. In 1899, while serving as one of the United States representatives, she spoke before the International Congress of Women meeting in London, UK. Brown also spoke before Queen Victoria.
Brown was involved in the women’s suffrage campaign which led her to help organize the Colored Women’s League in Washington, D.C., one of the organizations that allied in 1896 to become the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). During her last year as president of the NACW, she spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Hallie Q. Brown published several significant books. In 1926, her book Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction was published. It documented the biographies of leading African American women of the era. Hallie Quinn Brown died in Wilberforce, Ohio in 1949.
Bibliography
Books:
Alexander, Adele Logan. Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.
Brown, Hallie Quinn. Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction. Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Publishing, 1926. (Reprinted in several editions in the 21st century)
Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Hine, Darlene Clark, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Honey, Maureen. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.
Hutchinson, George. In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.
Jenkins, Earnestine L. Black Women and the Politics of Racial Identity in the 19th Century. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021.
Jones, Beverly Washington. Quest for Equality: The Life and Writings of Mary Eliza Church Terrell, 1863-1954. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990.
Knight, Alisha R. Colored Girls and Boys Inspired by Hallie Quinn Brown: The Development of African American Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Lerner, Gerda. Black Women in White America: A Documentary History. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Peterson, Carla L. Doers of the Word: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North, 1830–1880. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Sterling, Dorothy. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Terrell, Mary Church. A Colored Woman in a White World. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1940 (Reprinted by Humanity Books, 2005).
Williams, Fannie Barrier. The Work of the Afro-American Woman. Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, 1895 (Reprinted by the University of Illinois Press, 2020).
Yellin, Jean Fagan. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Articles:
Carby, Hazel V. "Policing the Black Woman’s Body in an Urban Context." Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 4, 1992, pp. 738-755.
Collier-Thomas, Bettye. "Hallie Quinn Brown and the Politics of Respectability: African-American Women in Higher Education and the Struggle for Civil Rights." The Journal of African American History, vol. 91, no. 3, 2006, pp. 300-320.
Gaines, Kevin. "Black Women and the Rearticulation of Race and Gender in the Nineteenth Century." American Quarterly, vol. 50, no. 1, 1998, pp. 37-41.
Greene, Amanda L. "Claiming Public Space: Hallie Quinn Brown and the Evolution of African American Elocution." Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2, 2009, pp. 166-181.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. "Hallie Quinn Brown’s Contribution to the Black Women’s Club Movement." The Journal of Negro Education, vol. 61, no. 2, 1992, pp. 174-183.
Mitchell, Michele. "Silences Broken, Silences Kept: Gender and Sexuality in African-American History." Gender and History, vol. 11, no. 3, 1999, pp. 433-444.
Nelson, Jill. "The Public Influence of Black Women: Hallie Quinn Brown, Ida B. Wells, and the Struggle for Justice." American Studies Journal, vol. 57, no. 1, 2017, pp. 25-45.
Rogers, Deborah. "Hallie Quinn Brown: Elocutionist and Advocate for African-American Women." African American Review, vol. 34, no. 1, 2000, pp. 49-65.
Sherrard-Johnson, Cherene. "Representations of Black Women in the Post-Reconstruction Period: The Literary Legacy of Hallie Quinn Brown." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 27, no. 3, 2002, pp. 825-844.
Simmons, LaKisha Michelle. "Hallie Quinn Brown and the Battle for Women's Education in the Reconstruction Era." The Journal of African American History, vol. 98, no. 4, 2013, pp. 579-599.
Noites on Recent Publications and Scholarship
Carla L. Peterson’s Doers of the Word (1995) and Greene's article (2009) focus on the rhetorical strategies of African American women speakers, highlighting Hallie Quinn Brown’s role as a powerful public figure and advocate for racial and gender equality.
Collier-Thomas’s article (2006) provides a modern examination of Brown’s contributions to education and civil rights, connecting her work to the broader Black women’s club movement.
LaKisha Michelle Simmons’s article (2013) offers an insightful analysis of Brown’s efforts to promote education for African American women during the Reconstruction Era, emphasizing her long-term impact on Black women's education.