Who Is She?

Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964)

"Only the BLACK WOMAN can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage,then and there the whole . . . race enters with me'"
-- Anna Julia Cooper

"Not the boys less, but the girls more," wrote Anna J. Cooper in her collection of writings and essays, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892). Marked by an unusual maturity and mental aptitude, Cooper said that "not far from … kindergarten age" she had decided to be a teacher.  Her early and unbridled passion for learning, and her belief that women were well equipped to follow intellectual pursuits, carried Cooper from the then-ungraded St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina, to the Sorbonne in Paris.

During this more than fifty-year sojourn in pursuit of her dream, she also earned B.A. (1884) and M.A. (1887) degrees from Oberlin College, was principal of the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. (1902–06), and, in 1929, became the second president of Frelinghuysen University, in Washington, D.C.  Best known as an educator, Cooper also was a feminist, human rights advocate, distinguished scholar, essayist, author, lecturer, and vital force in the late nineteenth-century black woman's club movement.

The daughter of a slave woman, Hannah Stanley, and her master, George Washington Haywood of Raleigh, Cooper was born Annie Julia Haywood on August 10, 1858. Hired out as a nursemaid for Charles Busbee (later a successful lawyer), Hannah named the infant girl for Charles's mother. No one in her own home was literate, so probably it was in the Busbee home that young Annie's love for books and learning blossomed. Years later, however, as president of Frelinghuysen, Cooper touchingly honored her mother by naming one small department of the struggling institution the Hannah Stanley Opportunity School. As Cooper wrote about her mother, "mother … sacrificed and toiled to give me advantages that she had never enjoyed herself." Of her father, Cooper later wrote that beyond the act of procreation she owed him nothing.

Cooper entered St. Augustine's in 1867. There she coached or tutored other students, some of whom were years beyond her tender age of nine. About a decade later, when she protested the exclusion of young women from higher courses scheduled only for ministerial studies and, therefore, only for men, Cooper met her future husband. From Nassau, British West Indies, George A. C. Cooper was an Episcopal theology student and St. Augustine's new Greek teacher.

Although George was nearly fourteen years her senior, teacher and pupil developed a friendship, which later grew into love. They were married on June 21, 1877. With shared career goals, the couple worked tirelessly to achieve them during the two years they were married. George died on September 27, 1879, just two months after becoming the second black ordained clergyman in the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina.

At the age of twenty-one, Cooper was alone. Not one to complain about adversities, the young widow stoically continued on in the pursuit of her goals. Denied a modest increase in her thirty-dollar-a-month teaching salary, she left St. Augustine's in the fall of 1881 to travel to Oberlin, Ohio. The previous summer she had written to James Harris Fairchild, president of Oberlin College, saying "for a long time, I earnestly desired to take an advanced course in some superior Northern college, but could not … for lack of means."

Given Oberlin's enviable reputation for liberal thought and superior scholarship, Cooper believed that admission to Oberlin would be an important step in her long quest for higher education. Unlike most young women students of the time, Cooper—along with Mary Eliza Church (Terrell) and Ida A. Gibbs (Hunt)—took the four-year "gentlemen's course." The trio graduated from Oberlin in 1884, following Mary Jane Patterson (1862) as the first black women to complete a four-year course of study from an accredited American college.

While at Oberlin, Cooper began to see herself as a defender of her race and an advocate for black women. Personal successes and achievements to one side, she remained sensitive to the plight and needs of oppressed peoples, and was encouraged to be a free thinker and the voice of unheard southern black women. Her interaction with faculty members and peers, whose sound scholarship and intelligence reinforced her own views, helped Cooper prepare for her lifelong work. The first member of her family to go beyond the primary grades, Cooper left Oberlin eager to serve those who were unserved. Confident, poised, self-assured, and armed with an A.B., she felt ready to address the inequities and indignities that black women like her mother had experienced in slavery and in the post–Civil War South.

Cooper postponed for a year her planned return to Raleigh in order to teach at Wilberforce College in Ohio. As a devout and lifelong Episcopalian, Cooper had many contacts in the national black church community. At Wilberforce she met Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett, a noted cleric of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Cooper admired Arnett for his support of the cause of black women, and Arnett later wrote a favorable introduction to A Voice from the South.

Also among her supporters were clergymen Alexander Crummell, Francis J. Grimké, and Walter H. Brooks. Later she befriended Alexander Walters, a bishop in the AME Zion Church and head of the National Negro-American Political League. All social activists, these men worked to help those who, in Cooper's words, "were stuck at the bottom." In each of them she found a brother's sympathy for the difficult and adverse situation of black women.

As in her life experiences, Cooper forthrightly addressed critical issues in her writings. Not given to expediency or vagueness, she never avoided tough situations or difficult decisions. She used cogent arguments to persuade others of the importance and correctness of the causes she embraced. Although some people found her to be difficult, intractable, and blunt, St. Augustine's principal, John E. C. Smedes, described her in 1881 as "a woman of unusual culture and intelligence, and of unfeigned zeal and piety." Cooper, he said, had decided to "be better qualified to take part in the great work going forward in the South for the … education of its colored people."

After a year as head of the modern languages department at Wilberforce, Cooper returned to Raleigh to deal with urgent family matters. (In 1880–81, she had purchased a modest dwelling for her mother from Richard Battle, a member of the prominent Haywood clan.) For the next two years Cooper taught mathematics, Greek, and Latin at St. Augustine's, began outreach extension programs under the school's aegis, and helped found a Sunday school and a mission guild. As a member of the North Carolina Teacher's Association, she involved herself with critical education
issues, and in signing the group's report to the state legislature, she was very outspoken about the failure of lawmakers to appropriate "reasonable and just provisions for the training of … colored youth."

In 1887, Washington, D.C.'s first black Superintendent of Colored Schools, inspired by high praise from people at Oberlin, invited Cooper to join the faculty of M Street (now Paul Laurence Dunbar) High School. Not completely unknown in Washington, Cooper boarded with the Rev. Alexander Crummell and his wife. Already living with the Crummells were Oberlin graduates Mary Jane Patterson, also from Raleigh, and her sister Channie; Mary Eliza Church (Terrell); Ida Gibbs (Hunt); and, later, Gibbs's sister, Harriet Gibbs Marshall. Cooper quickly joined with them and others in order to work for social progress, allying herself with groups that addressed issues important to the national black community. Battles won in Washington often had broad implications for black Americans across the nation, and Cooper worked unstintingly to present a more positive image of her race.

The decade of the 1890s was an important period in the fostering of black intellectual and political thought. In the vanguard of the struggle for human rights, Cooper and the groups with whom she was associated promoted opportunities for academic excellence for black youth; built groups and clubs of learning and culture for black women; defended the honor of, and demanded respect for, the reputations and views of black people; and effectively articulated their needs, hopes, and aspirations. To these efforts Cooper and her colleagues brought more than a half-century of commitment to, and activism in, antislavery groups, abolitionist societies, women's rights groups, literary and self-improvement clubs, and benevolent organizations. Some, like Cooper, had published and lectured on circuits such as Chautauqua. Known for her learning, modesty, and culture, Cooper herself was recognized as an "inspiring lecturer and leader."

As spokeswomen for their race, Anna Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Fanny Jackson Coppin were invited in 1893 to address a special meeting of the Women's Congress in Chicago.  This international gathering of women was held to coincide with the World's Columbian Exposition, in order to ensure a large audience and wide press coverage. A special session addressing the theme "The Intellectual Progress of Colored Women of the United States since Emancipation" was held to give black women a hearing before an international body of white women. Cooper's thesis was a subject she often addressed, "The Needs and Status of black Women." A platform guest who was deeply moved by what he had heard, Frederick Douglass, rose to make impromptu remarks. In closing he said: "When I hear such speeches … from our women—our women—I feel a sense of gratitude to Almighty God that I have lived to see what I now see."

Cooper was the only woman elected to membership in the esoteric American Negro Academy, founded in 1897 by Alexander Crummell. Among its select members were W. E. B. DuBois, Kelly Miller, Jesse E. Moorland, Arthur A. Schomburg, and Carter G. Woodson. This late nineteenth-century black think tank had among its objectives "the publication of scholarly work and the defense of the Negro against vicious assault."

At the first Pan-African Conference in London's Westminster Hall in 1900, Cooper and Anna H. Jones of Missouri were the only two black women to address the international gathering of African, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-American descendants. Cooper's address, "The Negro Problem in America," was to have been published in the conference report, but has not been found. An official U.S. delegate and elected member of the executive committee, Cooper also served on a committee that drafted a memorial to Queen Victoria, which also addressed the issue of apartheid. Concisely and poignantly, the conferees appealed for immediate relief from "acts of injustice directed against Her Majesty's subjects in South Africa."

Cooper followed this heady experience with a trip to France to tour the Paris Exposition. Among egalitarians and black expatriates, and accompanied by DuBois, Cooper visited the Social Economy Building's Negro Pavilion, which housed the Exposition des Nègres d'Amérique.  Mounted by the Library of Congress and first displayed at M Street High School, the exhibit featured the black community of Washington, D.C.

Revitalized by her involvement in the Pan-African Conference, Cooper returned home to her teaching duties. Although she had been asked to serve on the planning committee for the next gathering, to be held in Boston in 1902, this conference did not materialize. The conference's cancellation may have been linked to monitoring by the U.S. State and War departments of black activists in Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba, where a Negro revolution was rumored to be under way in 1900–01. The Interior Department's Bureau of Insular Affairs compiled files (captioned "Negro") about the militancy of black islanders. These so-called investigations were
followed by a second occupation of Cuba and American civil-military rule there from 1906 to 1909.

When Robert H. Terrell resigned as principal of M Street High School on December 31, 1901, to become the District of Columbia's first black municipal judge, Cooper, who had taught math and science at the school since 1887, succeeded him, becoming the second black female principal in the school's history. Others who had served in the post were Mary Jane Patterson, Richard T. Greener, Francis L. Cardozo, and Winfield Scott Montgomery.

Cooper began her new duties on January 2, 1902. At the time, M Street was the only high school in the nation to offer a diverse curriculum that prepared black students for either industry or college, including the Ivy League schools. Under Cooper's leadership the school became a showcase for the best and brightest, and Cooper and her faculty used their alumni contacts to get scholarships for worthy pupils. When Father Felix Klein of the Catholic Institute of Paris visited the school in 1903 and observed a Latin class being taught by Cooper herself, he found it incredible that a terrible race problem existed in the United States. However, Cooper's leadership and the school's college preparatory work were not to go unchallenged.

The 1904–05 school year was one of turmoil, as allegations of insubordination and personal impropriety by Cooper, and rumors of student misconduct, circulated around the city. Cooper was the fulcrum of what was called "the M Street High School controversy." Community opinion—whether for or against her—depended largely on so-called revelations in the local press.  The Washington Post reported in 1905 that the controversy began with an address to M Street students by W. E. B. DuBois in the winter of 1902–03. His remark that there was "a tendency throughout the country to restrict the curriculum of colored schools" sent shock waves through the city school system. Cooper's chief antagonist was her supervisor, Percy M. Hughes, director of Washington's high schools. Despite the school board's promise to conduct a speedy inquiry, it dragged through inconclusive evidence for months.

Finally, in October 1906, the board decided not to reappoint Cooper; school board member Mary Church Terrell, part of the Oberlin trio, and her husband, Judge Robert H. Terrell, were silent about the board's reasons and actions. The tendency of Congress to meddle in the affairs of the District of Columbia cannot be ignored as a factor in Cooper's dismissal, but some people suspected the influence of Booker T. Washington and the so-called Tuskegee machine. Amid the recurring debate over vocational training (Washington's position) versus classical education (the position of DuBois), Cooper left Washington, D.C., proud of M Street's record, now recognized as a creditable college preparatory high school whose students merited admission even into Ivy League colleges. Cooper taught at Lincoln University in Missouri for four years, then returned to Washington, D.C., to teach Latin again at the school she had formerly led.

Tough-minded and tenacious, Cooper would meet new and diverse challenges. She bought a home, made extensive repairs, and became guardian to five great-nieces and nephews, aged six months to twelve years. It was a strenuous challenge at any age, but Cooper, then in her fifties, persevered. In 1911, while pursuing a Ph.D., she attended summer sessions at "La Guilde" in Paris. From 1915 to 1917, she attended summer classes at Columbia University and later took extension courses there. Sponsored by Father Klein, she applied to the Sorbonne in 1923. When that school accepted her Columbia credits, she studied for many hours at the Library of Congress and then traveled to France to meet dissertation requirements; this, of course, was before teachers were allowed sabbatical leave.

On March 23, 1925, Cooper became the fourth African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. (preceded by Georgiana R. Simpson, Eva B. Dykes, and Sadie T. M. Alexander). Cooper's dissertation, "The Attitude of France toward Slavery during the Revolution," was indicative of her broad knowledge, sound scholarship, and continued interest in pan-Africanism. At the age of sixty-six, she had completed her journey from slavery to the Sorbonne; her dream had become a reality. On December 29, 1925, William Tindall, a D.C. commissioner, awarded her the degree at Howard University's Rankin Chapel in a ceremony sponsored by the Xi Omega chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

Frelinghuysen University was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1907 by Jesse Lawson. This nontraditional group of schools was to be a beacon of hope for "colored working people," and Cooper was installed as its second president on June 15, 1930. There were serious problems, however. Frelinghuysen had no permanent building or endowment; tuition alone paid teachers' stipends; and university trustees seemed unable to overcome old management disputes.

Recurring exigencies forced Cooper, at great sacrifice, to move some academic programs into her home at 201 T Street, N.W. She neither charged rent nor accepted a salary. Instead, she chartered the Hannah Stanley Opportunity School, which was annexed to the university but had a self-governing board of trustees charged to protect the school and Cooper's property from any threat of dissolution that the university might face. A 1933 codicil to Cooper's will devoted her property "in perpetuo to [the] Education of Colored Adults."

Frelinghuysen lost its charter in 1937 and no longer awarded degrees. The Washington, D.C., Board of Education, the only agency that could independently recognize it as a university, refused to do so. The university's trustees urged Cooper to make a public appeal for funds needed in order to upgrade Frelinghuysen and attract a stronger faculty. Feeling that such an appeal would be an unfair burden on the very community the institution was founded to serve, she refused. Instead, at age seventy-nine, Cooper sought a job with the Works Progress Administration's Office of Education, but she was not hired. She then tried to sell her property in Raleigh. The U.S. District Court upheld the school superintendent's decision not to accredit Frelinghuysen's law school, a disastrous ruling for the university. With just a few students enrolled, Cooper remained in a largely ceremonial role. In about 1940, the university became the Frelinghuysen Group of Schools for Colored Working People, and Cooper became its registrar.

The death of her great-niece and namesake, Annie Cooper Haywood Beckwith, of pneumonia in 1939 hastened Cooper's decline. Beckwith was six months old in 1915 when Anna Cooper became her guardian. After refusing to yield to most adversities, she had rested her hope for Frelinghuysen's future in Annie; now that hope was gone. Her post-Frelinghuysen endeavors were anticlimactic. In 1951, she privately published Personal Recollections of the Grimké Family and the Life and Writings of Charlotte Forten Grimké. In her book, Cooper told about the lives of the Grimkés, who were also slave descendants. She lived many more years—mostly with her memories—and spoke of other books she wished to write, but her failing health did not permit her to do so.

Anna J. Cooper was a versatile woman whose cogent ideas and diversity of thought are best demonstrated in her published works, lectures, poems, and miscellaneous writings. A consummate teacher, she ranked high among her peers. She was a feminist and a stoic activist in the struggle for the betterment of black people. A much sought-after speaker, she was outspoken on such subjects as racism, the status of black women, and educational systems that failed to consider the needs of black and female students. Continuing to seek solutions to vexing problems, she addressed diverse themes, including "College Extension for Working People," "Modern Education," "The Negro Dialect," "A Problem in American Education: Loss of Speech through Isolation," and "Legislative Measures Concerning Slavery in the U.S." Cooper's commitment to education and organizational work left scant time for her personal life. She did not retire from her active career as an educator until her eighty-fourth year.

At the age of 105, Cooper died peacefully at her Washington, D.C., home on Thursday, February 27, 1964. She asked only to be remembered as "somebody's teacher on vacation … resting for the Fall opening." After a simple service at St. Augustine's College Chapel, she was buried in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday, March 4, 1964.


By: Louise Daniel Hutchinson
From: Darlene Clark Hine, editor. Facts On File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America: Education. New York, NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1997.

Source:  http://www.wilberforce.edu/library/archives/history/biographies/cooper.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~e73afram/be-nk-gbe.html