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daughter, Gayle, she continued her education. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1946, and a master's degree in 1948, in art education from the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1946, she began a teaching career with DuSable High School that would last 23 years. Her determination to take advantage of all the opportunities unavailable to her parents propelled her to develop fully as an artist and an educator. Her belief in the need for each person to reach his or her potential shaped the approach she took with her students. Eventually her artistic pursuits expanded to include writing, especially poetry. In 1947, several definitive events took place in Margaret's life. She and Bernard Goss divorced; one of her prints on exhibit at Atlanta University was awarded an honorable mention; and she published her first book, Jespar, the Drummin' Boy. Published under her family name of Taylor, the children's book was written and illustrated by Margaret.

On December 23, 1949, Margaret married Charles Gordon Burroughs. She spent much of the next decade pursuing her artwork, teaching, and continuing her education. She went to Mexico City in 1953, to study at the Institute of Painting and Sculpture. In the late 1950s she attended summer graduate courses at the Teachers College of Columbia University. Then in 1956, she compiled a children's book entitled Did You Feed My Cow?: Rhymes and Games From City Streets and Country Lanes as a way to preserve childhood rhymes and games for future generations.

Burroughs, however, had a vision of doing more to preserve black heritage.  With her husband, Burroughs converted the ground floor of their old Chicago mansion into a small museum in which they could display a variety of artifacts. More than 500 people toured the museum during its first year. Heartened by the public's interest, Burroughs devoted herself to raising funds for the museum. She firmly believed that this museum would enrich lives, especially those of young black people. "A museum … shows kids they can be somebody," Burroughs stated in Black Enterprise.

By emphasizing the cultural and racial roots of black people, Burroughs hoped to teach young people that not only could they be somebody but that they came from a proud and strong black heritage. Besides serving as a repository for black art, papers, artifacts, and memorabilia, the museum also met the needs of its visitors with youth activities, essay contests, art festivals, and poetry festivals. By 1970, museum attendance was more than 30,000 annually.

Based on her experiences as a teacher, Burroughs knew that traditional textbooks excluded most of the contributions black people had made to the growth of the United States and completely ignored the rich cultural past from Africa that was the birthright of every black person. Burroughs believed that these biased and sometimes racist textbooks gave young black people an inaccurate picture of who they were; furthermore, she believed that these textbooks were detrimental to the vulnerable self-esteem of young people. A museum devoted to black culture and history, Burroughs ascertained, would help fight the damage being done to young blacks' self-esteem.

From its humble beginnings in three rooms of the Burroughs home, the DuSable museum has grown into a building of more than 60,000 square feet; it houses African and Afro-American art, manuscripts, personal papers, and more than 10,000 books related to African and Afro-American history and culture. In 1991 ground was broken for the Harold Washington Wing, which added another 25,000 square feet and included a sculpture garden, several galleries, an enlarged auditorium, and an expanded gift shop. In a 1980 Black Enterprise piece, Burroughs related, "In the beginning we worked as