Early Life and Education
Lucy Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Irish Catholic family. She was described by fellow National Woman’s Party member Inez Haynes Irwin as “blue-eyed and fresh-complexioned; dimpled; and her head is burdened, even as Alice Paul’s, with an enormous weight of hair.” She was extremely beautiful, and lewd men always treated her disrespectfully. She was a gifted student and first attended Packer Collegiate Institute, or what was originally known as the Brooklyn Female Academy, for second preparatory school in 1890. Packer Collegiate Institute prided itself on “teaching girls to be ladies,” and they emphasized religious education while advocating more liberal ideals such as educating “the mind to habits of thinking with clearness and force.” Burns also met one of her lifelong role models, Laura Wylie, while attending Packer Collegiate Institute. Wylie was one of the first women to go to Yale University Graduate School. Burns also attended Columbia University, Vassar College, and Yale University before becoming an English teacher.
Burns taught at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn for two years. While Burns enjoyed the educational field, she generally found the experience to be frustrating and wanted to continue her own studies. In 1906, at age twenty-seven, she moved to Germany to resume her studies in language. In Germany, Burns studied at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin from 1906 to 1909. Burns later moved to the United Kingdom, where she enrolled at Oxford University to study English. Burns was fortunate enough to have a very extensive educational background because her father, Edwards Burns, supported her and financed her international education.
Read more about this topic: Lucy Burns
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)