Williana Burroughs

Drawing of Williana Burroughs from the 1933 election campaign, as published in The Daily Worker.

Williana "Liana" Jones Burroughs (January 2, 1882 – December 24, 1945) was an American teacher, communist political activist, and politician. She is best remembered as one of the first women to run for elective office in New York.

Early years

Williana Jones, known to family and friends as "Liane," was born on January 2, 1882, in Petersburg, Virginia. Her mother had formerly been a slave for 16 years, her father died when Williana was just four years old. Her widowed mother left Virginia for New York City, bringing Williana together with a sister and a brother (Gordon Jones), where she worked as a cook. After graduation, she attended New York City Normal College, known today as Hunter College, where she achieved credentials to become a teacher.

Political career

Williana Burroughs joined the Workers (Communist) Party in September 1926. She became active in the campaign for defense of the Scottsboro boys and was chairman of the Blumberg Defense Council, an organization formed to defend Isidore Blumberg, a teacher removed from the New York public schools system due to his political views. Burroughs traveled with her husband and her two youngest sons to the convention, with the boys remaining in the Soviet Union to attend school thereafter. Burroughs would not be reunited with them until 1937.

Burroughs made use of the pseudonym "Mary Adams" in the communist movement during the 1920s and 1930s, publishing an article for the party's daily newspaper under that name for May Day 1928. She became prominent within the party organization and was selected as an alternate delegate to the 6th National Convention of the Communist Party USA in March 1929. The war intervened and Burroughs and her sons remained in Moscow until 1945, when she finally managed to return to New York with the younger boy.

Death and legacy

Williana Jones Burroughs died on December 24, 1945, at the Manhattan home of her friend Hermie Huiswoud, just two months after her return to the United States and barely more than a week before what would have been her 64th birthday.

Her son Charles Burroughs, the oldest of the boys who had been left in Moscow, retained his American citizenship and was inducted into the U.S. Army early in 1945. After his military service he returned to the United States and in 1961 co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, of which he remained curator until 1980. A Chicago high school is named after him.

Her granddaughter Carola Burroughs was interviewed by Yelena Demikovsky for the documentary Black Russians - The Red Experience, about African-Americans who moved to the Soviet Union.