Cooper, Anna J. (c. 1858–1964)

African-American educator, scholar, feminist, and writer. Name variations: Annie. Born Anna Julia Hay-wood Cooper in Raleigh, North Carolina, on August 10, 1858 or 1859; died in Washington, D.C., on February 27, 1964; daughter of Hannah Stanley (a slave) and possibly George Washington Haywood (her owner); attended Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute (now Saint Augustine's College), Raleigh; A.B., Oberlin College, 1884; M.S. in mathematics, Oberlin College, 1887; attended Guilde Internationale, Paris, France, summers of 1911, 1912, and 1913; attended Columbia University, summers 1914–17; Ph.D., Sorbonne, 1925; married George A.C. Cooper, in 1877 (died 1879).

During the years following the Emancipation Proclamation, Anna Cooper, the daughter of a slave, became a student at the newly opened Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, where she remained to become a teacher. In 1877, she married fellow teacher George A.C. Cooper, who died just two years later. As a young widow, Cooper went on to attend Oberlin College, one of the few institutions at the time that accepted blacks and women. After earning a master's degree in mathematics (1887), she took a position in Washington, D.C., at the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, later renamed the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. A teacher at the Dunbar High School, Cooper also served as principal from 1902 until 1906 when she left over a dispute with school board members who wished to dilute the curriculum of "colored" schools; she returned in 1910 to teach Latin. After several summers at the Guilde Internationale in Paris and three summers at Columbia University, she received her doctorate degree at the Sorbonne on March 23, 1925, at age 66. She was only the fourth African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. and was among the first women to do so in France. While teaching and pursuing her studies, Cooper raised two foster children as well as her half-brother's five orphaned grandchildren.

Throughout her career, she was concerned with women's rights and the status of African-Americans. During a period of racial terrorism in the 1890s, Cooper and other black intellectuals were instrumental in arousing public consciousness of race relations and providing direction. During the decade, she presented papers and addressed a number of diverse groups and organizations, including the American Conference of Educators (1890), the Congress of Representative Women (1893), The National Conference of Colored Women (1895), and the National Federation of Afro-American Women (1896). Her earliest writing, A Voice from the South (1892), contains her views as a dedicated feminist and an advocate for her race.

In her later years, Cooper was involved with Washington's Frelinghuysen University, an institution providing adult educational opportunities for blacks, of which she served as president for a short time. Anna Julia Cooper died on February 27, 1964, at the age of 105.

suggested reading:

Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman from the South. NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Hutchinson, Louise Daniel. Anna J. Cooper, a Voice from the South. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 1981.

collections:

The papers of Anna J. Cooper are in the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.