Lugenia Burns Hope was a Beacon of Light in Atlanta

Lugenia Burns was born the youngest of seven children in St. Louis, Mo. She quit school to work full time when her family faced economic hardship, until she was able to continue her education.

She worked at settlement houses such as Kings Daughters and Hull House in Chicago while studying at the Chicago Art Institute, Chicago School of Design and Chicago Business School.

Around this time, Burns met John Hope, a theology student at Brown University. They married and moved to Nashville, Tennessee when John was offered a profressorship at Roger Williams University. While living in Nashville, Lugenia taught physical education and arts and crafts classes at the university while involved in community activities as well.

But John longed to return to his native Georgia and was able to do that after about a year at Roger Williams. He joined the faculty of Atlanta Baptist College (now Morehouse College) and eventually became the founding president of Atlanta University, the country's first black graduate school.

Lugenia wasted no time in familiarizing herself with her new community and its needs. She enlisted the help of some of her husband's students to make inquiries in the neighborhood around the college regarding circumstances local families were facing at that time. As a result of the information gathered, Lugenia was able to convince the college to provide space for daycare, kindergartens and recreational facilities for residents of the surrounding area.

From these first actions, sprang the Neighborhood Union. It was the first woman-run social welfare agency for African-Americans in Atlanta. The organization provided medical, recreational, employment and educational services for the black community in Atlanta. Hope served as head of it Board of Managers for almost 30 years.

The United Service Organization (USO) provided entertainment programs during World War II, but only to white soldiers. Hope's Neighborhood Union picked up where the USO left off, providing similar services to the black military community in Atlanta through the YWCA War Work Councils. So successful was the program that Hope was called upon to organize a nationwide network of Hostess Houses providing recreational programs and relocation counseling to black and Jewish soldiers.

Hope was also vice president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Through this organization, Hope created citizenship schools: six-week courses on voting, democracy and the U.S. Constitution. These classes became the seeds from which the Civil Rights Movement grew.

A founding member of the Atlanta branch of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, Hope diligently challenged racial discrimination. She challenged the national YWCA for their practices of segregation and white domination, stating, "Ignorance is ignorance wherever found, yet the most ignorant white woman may enjoy every privilege that America offers. Now . . . the ignorant Negro woman should also enjoy them."[1]

Hope also worked with The Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL). The efforts of this group were to create a national bill prohibiting lynching and requiring the prosecution of those who engaged in it.

It discouraged Hope that she could not get more white southern women to participate in this endeavor. Hope said, " It is difficult for me to understand why my white sisters so strenuously object to this honest expression of colored women...After all, when we yield to public opinion and make ourselves say only what we think the public can stand, is there not a danger that we may find ourselves, with our larger view, conceding what those with the narrow view demand?"[2]

With all her activism, Hope still found time to make clothing for her children, run a household, and to travel with her husband on business trips

When she died in 1947, her ashes were cast from the tower of Morehouse College as per her wishes.

Sources:

[1] Social Workers
[2] Georgia Women of Achievement