Specializing in the Wholly Impossible

"We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible" signifies the complexities and contradictions inherent in being black and female in America during the first decades of the twentieth century. This book examines the rhetorics employed by civil rights activist and school founder Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961). Burroughs'' motto of specializing in impossibility denotes a profound paradox that African American women were able to believe in their own agency despite the virulent forces of racism. Rhetoric is the most significant referent to how African American women survived and progressed historically. Burroughs'' writings reveal complex rhetorical strategies that teach and model phronesis (practical wisdom) creating a discourse grounded in feminist principles. Her startling approach unsettled her contemporaries but withstands the forgetfulness of time, and emerges as a highly unusual progenitor of black feminism. This work joins in scholarship that investigates rhetorical practices of African American women. Exploring Burroughs'' rhetoric reveals a curious trajectory of the practical uses of rhetoric and how it informs Western and African American rhetorical traditions.