Cooke, Marvel c. 1901–2000

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Marvel Cooke c. 1901–2000

Journalist and activist

Refused to Testify During Communist “Witch Hunt”

Marvel Cooke’s life story is an exceptional one, from her upper-class upbringing in a politically progressive Minnesota family to her adult life as a journalist, trade unionist, and political activist. Cooke came to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and befriended some of history’s leading artists and intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Richard Wright. As a journalist, her landmark series, “The Bronx Slave Market,” exposed the exploitation of black women by wealthy white women in New York. She fought for workers’ rights as a member of the Newspaper Guild, and was called to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy about her membership in the Communist Party. In the seventies, she worked on behalf of the defense of radical icon Angela Davis. Friend Lloyd Brown called Cooke “one of those unsung heroines of our people,” according to Philly.com.

Cooke was born Marvel Jackson c. 1901, in Mankato, Minnesota, and was raised in an upper-class, white neighborhood in Minneapolis. Her father, Madison Jackson, was an Ohio State University law school graduate who, unable to find a law firm that would hire a black lawyer, was forced to work as a Pullman sleeping-car operator; her mother, Amy Wood Jackson, was a former teacher who once lived on an Indian reservation. Her parents were “Eugene V. Debs socialists,” Cooke later claimed, her father being more politically active than her mother, who was kept busy with the children. Though her father died in 1927, Cooke’s mother was politically supportive of her later in life. Cooke graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in English in 1925. She planned to take a teaching job in the South, but was offered a job at the NAACP’s monthly publication, the Crisis, as an editorial assistant to W.E.B. Du Bois, and headed off to New York City.

Immersed in the Harlem Renaissance

Cooke arrived in Harlem at the tail end of the Harlem Renaissance. Du Bois, who had once dated Cooke’s mother, recognized Cooke’s talent for writing, and put her in charge of a column. Her column consisted of a summary of items of interest to African Americans that Cooke culled from a variety of publications. Du Bois, who is credited by many as the intellectual force behind the civil rights movement was “a very warm human being; despite what other people thought about him,” according to an interview found online at Philly.com. Du

At a Glance…

Born Marvel Jackson c. 1901, in Mankato, Minnesota; died on November 29, 2000; daughter of Madison Jackson and Amy Wood Jackson; married c. 1929. Education: Graduated University of Minnesota, 1925.

Career: Moved to New York City; worked as an editorial assistant to W.E.B. DuBois at NAACP’s Crisis magazine, 1927; helped form the Newspaper Guild’s first unit in New York City; became a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s; wrote features for the Amsterdam News, 1928-37; was assistant managing editor of People’s Voice, 1940-47; campaigned for Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace, 1948; joined the staff of the white-owned New York Daily Compass, 1950-52; was New York director of the Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, 1950s; took the Fifth Amendment when called to testify before Sen. Joseph McCarthy about her activities in the Communist Party, 1953; was legal defense secretary of the Angela Davis Defense Fund, 1970s; served as national vice chairman in the National Council on American-Soviet Friendship; wrote for the New World Review until the magazine’s demise in the eighties; appeared in the documentary W.E.B. DuBois-A Biography in Four Voices, 1995.

Bois called Cooke “daughter” and often accompanied her to social events.

Harlem was thriving when Cooke moved to New York, and she moved in elite artistic and intellectual circles. She became friends with some of the leading figures of the era, including singer-actor/activist Paul Robeson and artist Elizabeth Catlett. She was engaged for a time to Roger Wilkins, a future leader of the NAACP. Cooke’s sister married Wilkins’s younger brother, Earl Wilkins. Cooke and her writing group, which included novelist Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, read the first chapter of Wright’s landmark book, Native Son, “a million times” while the author reworked it, she recalled in the Philly.com interview. During the next two decades, Cooke’s own writings delved into such issues as segregation in New York. She lived in an apartment at 409 Edgecombe Ave., a legendary Harlem address which has been home to Du Bois, Wilkins, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, among others. She remained at the same address for 70 years.

Cooke left the Crisis in 1928 to take a job at the Amsterdam News. Her editors there sent her to report crime stories, which she disliked. “Working at the Crisis was an editorial experience, and working at the Amsterdam News was a street experience,” she told Philly.com. Newly married to Cecil Cooke in 1929, Cooke took a break from the News to teach with him at North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, North Carolina. She returned to the Amsterdam News in 1931. Cooke helped form the Newspaper Guild’s first chapter in New York City with several co-workers, and held union meetings in her home. The editorial workers’ union was locked out of the Amsterdam News and picketed for “eleven long, cold weeks,” Cooke told Philly.com. “It was the worst experience of my life.” In a series of interviews Cooke later did with the Washington Press Club Foundation, she recalled being asked, “What’s a nice girl like you doing on a picket line?” and replying, “The bosses are not necessarily in your corner, even if they are your own color.” She was jailed twice during the strike, which finally ended Christmas Eve 1934. In 1937, Cooke quit the Amsterdam News in protest over a sensational headline that read: “Killed Sweetheart, Slept With Body.”

Refused to Testify During Communist “Witch Hunt”

It was during the Amsterdam News strike that Cooke joined the Communist Party. She was recruited on the picket line by Benjamin Davis, a future New York councilman. Cooke told an interviewer in 1989 that the professed goals of American Communists were her goals, including racial equality and expanded welfare programs, according to the Washington Post. She felt, after her politically progressive upbringing, it was a natural step for her. Many American Communists left the Party in the thirties, forties, and fifties. As she told a Washington Post reporter in 1993, Cooke never held party office, but remained a member. In 1953, Cooke was called twice to testify before Sen. Joseph McCarthy on Capitol Hill about her involvement with the Communist Party. She was asked to provide information about a clerk at the People’s Voice, but she refused to cooperate and took the Fifth Amendment. She referred to McCarthy as “a peanut,” according to Philly.com, and laughingly recalled the clerk in question as a strident anti-Communist.

Cooke regularly walked picket lines during the twenties and thirties, not only for the Newspaper Guild, but also for civil rights demonstrations, many of which were led by Adam Clayton Powell, a Harlem pastor who became a Democratic congressman. She campaigned for Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace in 1948. When Paul Robeson was barred for his political activism from traveling outside the United States in the fifties, he called on Cooke for help. She attended an international peace conference in East Germany in Robeson’s place, and later called the trip the “greatest experience of my political life,” according to Philly.com. When she returned to the States, Cooke’s passport was confiscated by federal agents, but activist attorney William Kunstler later worked to get it back.

In 1940, Cooke took a job as assistant managing editor of a new publication founded by Adam Clayton Powell, called the People’s Voice. The publication was “just the kind of paper that we envisioned coming out of Harlem,” she told P hilly.com. “It was a people’s paper dedicated to making things better in this community.” She remained with the paper until it closed in 1947.

Exposed “The Bronx Slave Market”

Cooke took a job at the white-owned Daily Compass in 1950. Not only was she the only African American on the staff, she also was the only female. She later told Philly.com that she was not treated differently from anyone else on the staff, and “It never occurred to me that it was strange… In retrospect, I do think it was a very progressive move.” She laughingly recalled one editor who was unduly tough on her, but when confronted by co-workers, confessed he was uncomfortable because he felt he could not swear in front of her. She told him that, although she did not swear, she had heard the language all her life and it did not bother her. She wrote about the arts and life in New York’s black neighborhoods for the Compass, and went undercover for a landmark series called “The Bronx Slave Market.” She stood on a Bronx street corner with other black women, as they did every morning, and waited to be chosen by white housewives for housework. Cooke recounted in her story that the strongest-looking “slaves” were hired first, and that she had to argue to get 80 cents an hour to wash floors. The series sold a lot of papers, and Cooke remained with the paper until it closed in 1952. Paula Parker, a journalist and cousin of Cooke’s, told Philly.com, “She cut a path that was just so wide and so clear that you can’t help but be inspired by her and her work.”

After the demise of the Compass, Cooke focused more on activism. She became New York director of the Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, and was national vice chairman of the National Council for Soviet-American Friendship. She volunteered as legal defense secretary of the Angela Davis Defense Fund in 1971. Davis, the sixties radical activist/professor charged with murder and kidnapping, was once on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, but was eventually acquitted. Cooke wrote for the New World Review until its demise in the eighties. She died of leukemia at a New York Hospital at age 99. “I didn’t realize,” she told Philly.com, “until much later looking back on my life, that I was having such a great experience.”