Cooper, Anna Julia (1858-1964), was an African American educator and writer, and a strong supporter of civil rights for Black people and women. She wrote the collection of essays A Voice from the South (1892). This collection is often considered one of the first major books on Black feminism. In the book, Cooper emphasizes the importance of education in helping Black women achieve equal rights.
Cooper was born Anna Julia Haywood on Aug. 10, 1858, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was the daughter of a slaveholder and an enslaved woman. At age 10, she entered St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute (now St. Augustine’s University) in Raleigh. At the time, St. Augustine’s was a school for African Americans. She became a teacher at the school after graduating in 1877. That year, she married George A. C. Cooper, who was also a teacher at the school. He died in 1879.
In 1884, Anna Julia Cooper graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio with a degree in mathematics. In 1885, she returned to St. Augustine’s to teach math, Greek, and Latin. In 1887, she became a math and science teacher at the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth in Washington, D.C. The school was renamed M Street High School in 1891 and Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in 1916. Cooper became the school’s principal in 1902. From 1906 to 1910, she taught languages at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. In 1910, she returned to M Street High School to teach Latin.
In 1914, while still teaching full-time, Cooper enrolled at Columbia University to pursue a Ph.D. degree. In 1924, she transferred to the Sorbonne in Paris. At the time, the Sorbonne was a division of the University of Paris. Cooper received a Ph.D. degree from the Sorbonne in 1925 at the age of 66. From 1930 to 1940, she served as president of Frelinghuysen University, a school for working African Americans in Washington, D.C. She died on Feb. 27, 1964, at the age of 105.
In 2022, a collection of Cooper’s major essays and some previously unpublished letters, poems, and other writings were published as The Portable Anna Julia Cooper.
