Mary Powell Burrill
Educator, Director, Playwright
1881-1946
Years:
Affiliations:
Emerson College, Dunbar High School, Howard University
Washington DC, Boston
Locations:
Connections:
Angelina Weld Grimke, May Miller, Willis Richardson
Mary Powell Burrill was born in August 1881 in Washington, D.C. and attended M Street (Dunbar) High School and graduated from Emerson College. Burrill was an early 20th-century African-American playwright of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote plays about racism and gender inequality (They that Sat in Darkness and Aftermath). She became the second Black woman produced on Broadway when her play Aftermath competed against Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, and J.M. Barrie in the 1928 Little Theater Tournament at The Frolic Theatre. In 1907 she became the Director of the Washington Conservatory of Music and School of Expression, and later returned to her alma-mater, Dunbar High School, where she remained until her retirement in 1944. As an educator, she inspired many students, including Willis Richardson and May Miller. Burrill also gave dramatic readings and directed plays and musical productions at Dunbar and throughout Washington, D.C.
They That Sit in Darkness, written in 1919, was controversial for its time because it focused on "female [sexual] education as the means to escape poverty" and dealt directly with the issue of reproductive rights for women. It was published in a special edition of Margaret Sanger's progressive Birth Control Review (September 1919), "The Negro's Need for Birth Control as Seen by Themselves." They That Sit in Darkness is also in Hatch and Shine's African American Theatre U.S.A. (1974).
While attending MStreet(Dunbar), Burrill shared a romance with fellow student Angelina Weld Grimké. Letters between the two date back to 1896. Grimke wrote to Burrill,
My own darling Mamie, If you will allow me to be so familiar to call you such. I hope my darling you will not be offended if your ardent lover calls you such familiar names… Oh, Mamie, if you only knew how my heart beats when I think of you and it yearns and pants to gaze, if only for one second, upon your lovely face..." (1896)
Parental disapproval led them to end the relationship by the end of their high school years.
In 1912, while teaching, Burrill met Lucy Diggs Slowe, an English teacher from Baltimore. The two owned a home together in Washington D.C. and lived together for 25 years until Slow died 1937.
For more, visit: https://minttheater.org/lost-voices-in-black-history/?tab=marypburrill
Please check out this podcast about Mary Burrill: https://www.thewriterwhoreads.com/podcastburrill/
