Teacher and playwright, Mary Burrill, was born August 1st 1881 in Washington, D.C. She graduated in 1901 from Washington’s M Street School (later Dunbar High School), renowned for its academic excellence, high-quality faculty, and progressive ideology. There she developed an interest in literature and theater. When her family moved to Boston, she attended Emerson College of Oratory (later Emerson College), where completed a three-year program in 1904. In 1905, Mary Burrill began her career as a teacher of English. Mary’s major concentration was in speech, diction, and dramatics at Armstrong Manual High School and Dunbar High.
In 1912, while teaching at Dunbar High School, Burrill met Lucy Diggs Stowe, an English teacher from Baltimore. Slowe was a founding member and the first president of the first Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, at Howard University. She also became the first Black woman to win a major sports title, when she won the American Tennis Association’s national title. After a few years, Slowe moved to Washington, D.C to teach at Armstrong Manual Training Academy, and she and Burrill bought a house together. She graduated from Emerson College in 1904. During her junior year at Emerson, Mary wrote “Unto the Third and Fourth Generations: A One-Act Play of Negro Life“.
The play was published in the college yearbook in 1930 and earned the title “Best Junior Play of the Year.” During her early years of teaching, she wrote a monologue “The Other Wise Man“. She presented it to high school and community audiences every Christmas season. At Dunbar, Mary wrote two one-act plays that position her as a notable playwright of the 20th century: “They That Sit in Darkness” (1919), and “Aftermath,” (1919). “Aftermath” was published in Liberator, a leading journal of avant-garde politics and art. It was not performed professionally until nine years later when staged by the Krigwa Players on May 8, 1928.
Set in rural South Carolina and written in the thick southern dialect, “Aftermath” is a period piece. The period was defined by lynching, race wars, and Black soldiers returning home from World War I combat. Only to find that, though they fought for freedom abroad, they were still second-class citizens at home. In this play, while fighting overseas, the veteran’s father had been lynched, and the soldier seeks revenge. The debate of whether or not the Black man should serve in war consumed the Harlem Renaissance. Other Black writers contributed to the play, such as Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
The Krigwa players were co-founded W.E.B. Du Bois and playwright Regina M. Anderson in 1925 to “advance the careers of Black playwrights and actors.” The Krigwa Players achieved great commercial success in ticket sales, and great critical acclaim from both Black and White critics in the late 1920’s. However, after an infamous feud with playwright Eulalie Spence in 1927, Du Bois left the company. After his unceremonious departure from the company, Du Bois contacted Burrill requesting permission for the players to enter her play. Burrill agreed, unaware that Du Bois was no longer affiliated with the players. “They That Sit in Darkness” focuses on the difficulties faced by working-class Black families with numerous children.
The play shows birth control as a way to escape the cycle of poverty. Burrill’s work was controversial because it advocated birth control as a means to escape poverty long before women were given reproductive rights in the U.S. Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review, a monthly publication advocating for women’s reproductive rights, published Burrill’s “They that Sit in the Darkness,” illustrating birth control as a way to escape poverty. Burrill identified her plays as essential to her personal activism. Her words were her way of highlighting and protesting the social injustices of her time.
A beloved teacher of English, speech, and drama, she returned to her hometown of Washington, D.C, after her graduation from Emerson College. Burrill taught English and drama at her alma mater, Dunbar High School. Burrill was well-respected among her students, holding high standards for their education and personal achievement. Some of her students went on to become educators and writers actively involved in the Harlem Renaissance. In 1929, she returned to Emerson College for postgraduate work. She received a B.L.I. (bachelor of literary interpretation) degree in 1930.
Mary Burrill hosted literary gatherings in her home, which was known as “The Half-Way House.” It served as a meeting space for creative expression and intellectual discussions among many prominent writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a friend of Jean Toomer, who had ties in Washington, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Burrill was a prominent member of Georgia Douglas Johnson’s famed S Street Salon, among the likes of Angelina Weld Grimké, Marita Bonner, May Miller, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Zora Neale Hurston. This is where female activists of the Harlem Renaissance would gather to discuss lynching, women’s rights, and the hardships facing Black families.
Mary taught several students that distinguished themselves as playwrights: Willis Richardson the first African American dramatist to have a play produced on Broadway, and May Miller (one of the most published playwright of the Harlem Renaissance). Among her prestigious colleagues at Dunbar was poet, essayist, and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké (Rachel). Burrill never married and continued to share a house with Lucy D. Stowe her entire adult life in Washington until Stowe passed away in 1937. Shattered from the death of Slowe, Burrill moved out of their house and into an apartment near Howard. After her retirement from teaching in 1944, Burrill moved to New York City where she spent the rest of her life.