COOPER, Anna Julia (Haywood)

Born 10 August 1858, Raleigh, North Carolina; died 27 February 1964, Washington, D.C.

Daughter of George Washington and Hanna Stanley Haywood; married George A. C. Cooper, 1877

Anna Julia Cooper had a lengthy career which she depicted as a conscious attempt to rectify the "one muffled strain in the Silent South," the voice of blacks. She believed that the black woman, in particular, had been "mute." Cooper's life and work provided a voice for the "hitherto voiceless black woman of America."

Born a slave in Wake County, North Carolina, Cooper began her remarkable career at the age of six when she entered St. Augustine's Normal and Collegiate Institute (an Episcopalian school) in Raleigh. There she became a "Pupil Teacher" when only nine years old. From that time until her death at age 105, Cooper dedicated her life to teaching. The education of others and herself defined the pattern of Cooper's career. In 1881, Cooper enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she received both a B.A. (1884) and an M.A. (1887). During her matriculation, she continued to teach, holding a position at the college preparatory, Oberlin Academy. In 1884, she returned to the South and to her alma mater, St. Augustine's, as an instructor of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. St. Augustine's became the springboard for Cooper's career as a writer.

Her first book, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), is a collection of essays, treatises, and reflections, based upon keen feminist insights and heightened racial awareness, which resulted from Cooper's own experiences. Her literary reputation rests primarily upon this pioneering volume. Divided into two parts, "Soprano Obligato" and "Tutti Ad Libitum," A Voice from the South contains eight essays which address the issues related specifically to the position of women and blacks in society. In her preface, "Our Raison d'Etre," Cooper announces that she has raised her voice as a black woman who "can more sensibly realize and more accurately tell the weight and the fret" of black life in the South. Her objective is to present the woman's point of view, the "other side" by one who "lives there," and who is "sensitive … to social atmospheric conditions." Cooper's emphasis emerges out of an awareness that just as whites "were not to blame if they cannot quite put themselves in the dark man's place, neither should the dark man be wholly expected fully and adequately to reproduce the exact Voice of the Black Woman." Her vision is clear, intelligent, and forceful.

Cooper's essays are not merely impassioned pleas by a woman for the equitable treatment of her race. Thoughtful and scholarly, her work evidences a comprehensive understanding of the position of women in America. Written in an energetic yet graceful prose, her essays are as engaging as they are persuasive. They constitute a significant contribution to the cultural and intellectual history of women and blacks in the U.S. It is fortunate that her collection, reprinted in 1969, is available to contemporary readers.

The fighting yet rational spirit of Cooper's essays carried over into her private life. She was the second woman appointed as principal in the Washington, D.C., public school system, and headed "M" Street (later renamed Dunbar) High School from 1901 to 1906. It was in this capacity that she made her most farreaching contribution to education. When Congress proposed a "special colored curriculum" in vocational education, it did not foresee strident opposition. Cooper, however, opposed the proposal because she believed it was based upon a conception of mental inferiority of blacks. She fought for, and won, an equal course of study for black youths.

As a principal, Cooper was ahead of her times in educational theory, just as she was in 1929 when she became president of Frelinghuysen University for employed adults in Washington. She was among the first educators to recognize the need for an evening college for working people. Cooper served as president of Frelinghuysen from 1929 to 1941, and worked actively for its accreditation.

Not only was Cooper a pioneer in education for blacks, but she was also a pioneer in life styles for women. At the age of sixty-seven, she received a doctorate from the Sorbonne, University of Paris. The year was 1925, and few women, especially black women, of any age held a doctorate. Cooper allowed neither age nor convention to deter her personal development. Two books in French are the result of her graduate research at the Sorbonne, Le Pélerinage de Charlemagne: Voyage á Jérusalem et á Constantinople (1925) and L'Attitude de La France a L'Egard de L'Esclavage Pendant La Révolution (1925).

When Cooper died a centenarian in 1964, she left an inspirational legacy of activism for which she was eulogized at funeral services held, appropriately, in the chapel of St. Augustine's College where her career had begun. She left, as well, an impressive collection of unpublished and privately printed works which provide a rich field for further study.

Other Works:

Legislative Measures Concerning Slavery in the United States (1942). Equality of Races and the DemocraticMovement (1945). The Life and Writings of the Grimké Family (1951). The Third Step (n.d.).

The papers of Anna Julia Cooper are at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Bibliography:

Bogin, R., and B. J. Lowenberg, "Anna Julia Cooper," in Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life (1976). Harley, S., "Anna Julia Cooper: A Voice for Black Women" in The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images (1978). Hutchinson, L. D., Anna J. Cooper: A Voice from the South (1981). Lerner, G., ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972). Majors, M. A., Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities (1893).