Correspondence, financial records, memoranda, notebooks, speeches and writings, subscription and literature orders, student records, printed matter, and other papers relating primarily to Burroughs's founding (1909) and management of the National Training School for Women and Girls (later the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls) in Washington, D.C., a school for young African American women, and to her activities with the Woman's Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention of the United States of America and its publication, The Worker. Also includes material relating to the National League of Republican Colored Women, the National Association of Wage Earners, the 1931 President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, missionary activities in Africa, Cooperative Industries, Washington, D.C. (a community self-help program), and the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association.

Correspondents include Charles C. Adams, Mary McLeod Bethune, Janie Bradford, Rebekah Calloway, Oscar De Priest, J.H. Dillard, Margery B. Gaillard, Henrietta M. Gibbs, Earl L. Harrison, Sallie Hert, J.H. Jackson, William Henry Jernagin, Lewis Garnett Jordan, Daisy E. Lampkin, Una Roberts Lawrence, Shirley W. Layten, Kathleen Moore Mallory, Uvee R. Mdodana-Arbouin, Robert Russa Moton, William Pickens, A. Clayton Powell, Adam Clayton Powell, Emmett J. Scott, Sallie W. Stewart, Anson Phelps Stokes, Geneva Wallace, Lacey Kirkland Williams, Marguerite V. Wood, Mrs. Ellis A. Yost, and Geneva R. Young.