Cooper, Anna Julia (1858-1964)

Author, community leader, and educator Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was the daughter of Hannah Stanley, a slave, and a male slave owner. Her mother's sacrifices inspired her throughout her life. Anna tutored other students beginning in 1867, when she was only 9 years old, at St. Augustine's Normal and Collegiate Institute, and remained there until 1881. Thus, her interests in black women, democracy, and education started early.

On June 21, 1877, Hannah married George A. G. Cooper, from Nassau, British West Indies. He was a minister in the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina, but he soon died, on September 27, 1879. Cooper entered Oberlin College, in Ohio, where she studied with Mary Church Terrell and Ida A. Gibbs (Hunt), who also became community leaders. Cooper completed both a BA and an MA at Oberlin and was recruited shortly thereafter in 1887 to teach at the Washington High School (later M Street School), where for many years she was the only African American on the faculty of the all-black school.

In 1892, Cooper published her most important book, A Voice From the South. These compiled speeches and papers, starting in 1884, discussed race, womanhood, education, and community activism. In this era, most African Americans lived in the South, with little participation in American politics and civil society. Women's voices were particularly absent, and Cooper displayed their unique contributions. Cooper's idea that only black women can announce “when and where I enter” with dignity and nonviolence and represent the “whole Negro race” that “enters with me” is a rallying call for black women today. Cooper defended higher education for black women, a cause to which she devoted much of her life. She called for a free womanhood for all women and a literature that reflected the life and times of everyone.

The following year, Cooper discussed the groundbreaking paper of Fannie Barrier Williams presented at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Frederick Douglass was so moved by the black woman's eloquence at this session that he claimed it was a higher achievement than he had hoped to see in his lifetime.

[Page 163]Cooper taught math and science at M Street Colored High School (renamed “Paul Laurence Dunbar”) in Washington, D.C., from 1887 to 1901. From 1901 to 1906, she became the school's principal. In 1904 and 1905, a political controversy waged over her leadership, and she was criticized for her “radical” teaching philosophy that black students should be held to the same high standards as white students. Her contract was not renewed in 1906. For the next 4 years, she taught at Lincoln University, in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Cooper was the only woman in the American Negro Academy, founded in 1897 by Alexander Crummell, and was a member of the Southern Sociological Congress in 1913. She cofounded the Colored Women's League in 1894, served as a trustee of the Colored Settlement House, and addressed the first pan-African conference in London in 1900.

Over the course of her life, Cooper adopted seven children, including five great-nieces and great-nephews, ranging from 6 months to 12 years. As they matured, Cooper periodically continued her graduate studies, and in 1923, she began full-time studies at the Sorbonne University, in Paris. In 1925, she completed her doctoral dissertation on “The Attitude of France Toward Slavery During the Revolution” and earned her PhD in literature. Cooper was the fourth African American women to receive a PhD.

...