Dr. Anna Julia Cooper

"On August 10, 1858, Dr. Anna Julia Cooper was born enslaved in Raleigh, NC.
Dr. Cooper received a scholarship to Saint Augustine's Normal School at the age of 9 years old, she was one of the first students to matriculate from there. She is the 4th African American Women to receive her Ph.D., when she earned it from the Sorbonne in Paris France.
Dr. Cooper has been honored as the 32nd recipient in the USPS Black Heritage Stamp Series, and she is the only woman with a quote on the US Passport."
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Anna "Annie" Julia Cooper was born into enslavement in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1858 to Hannah Stanley Haywood, an enslaved woman in the home of prominent Wake County landowner George Washington Haywood. Either George or his brother Fabius J. Haywood are thought to be Cooper's father.

Cooper worked as a domestic servant in the Haywood home and had two older brothers, Andrew J. Haywood and Rufus Haywood.. Andrew was a slave of Dr. Fabius J. Haywood, and he later served in the Spanish–American War. Rufus was also born a slave and was the leader of the music group Stanley's Band.

In 1868, when Cooper was nine years old, she received a scholarship and began her education at the newly opened Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh, founded by the local Episcopal diocese for the purpose of training teachers to educate former slaves and their families.

The Reverend J. Brinton offered Cooper a scholarship to help pay for her expenses According to Mark S. Giles, a Cooper biographer, "the educational levels offered at St. Augustine ranged from primary to high school, including trade-skill training."

During her 14 years at St. Augustine's, she distinguished herself as a bright and ambitious student who showed equal promise in both liberal arts and analytical disciplines such as math and science; her subjects included languages (Latin, French, Greek), English literature, math, and science. Although the school had a special track reserved for women – dubbed the "Ladies' Course" – and the administration actively discouraged women from pursuing higher-level courses, Cooper fought for her right to take a course reserved for men, by demonstrating her scholastic ability.

During this period, St. Augustine's pedagogical emphasis was on training young men for the ministry and preparing them for additional training at four-year universities. One of these men, George A. C. Cooper, would later become her husband. He died after only two years of marriage.

Cooper's academic excellence enabled her to work as a tutor for younger children, which also helped her pay for her educational expenses. After completing her studies, she remained at the institution as an instructor.

Cooper is a graduate of St. Augustine College , Class of 1882.

In the 1883–84 school year she taught classics, modern history, higher English, and vocal and instrumental music; she is not listed as faculty in the 1884–85 year, but in the 1885–86 year she is listed as "Instructor in Classic, Rhetoric, Etc.]

Her husband's early death may have contributed to her ability to continue teaching; had she stayed married, she might have been encouraged or required to withdraw from the university to become a housewife.

After her husband's death, Cooper entered Oberlin College in Ohio, where she continued to follow the course of study designated for men. Her classmates were Ida Gibbs (later Hunt) and Mary Church Terrell.

After teaching briefly at Wilberforce College, Cooper returned to St. Augustine's in 1885. She then went back to Oberlin and earned an M.A. in Mathematics in 1887.

She later moved to Washington, DC – where she would develop a close friendship with Charlotte Forten Grimké – Cooper began teaching at M Street High School, becoming principal in 1901.

Cooper made contributions to social science fields, particularly in sociology. She is sometimes called "the mother of Black Feminism."

A Voice from the South
During her years as a teacher and principal at M Street High School in Washington, D.C., Cooper completed her first book, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South, published in 1892, and also delivered many speeches calling for civil rights and women's rights. Perhaps her most well-known volume of writing, A Voice from the South is widely viewed as one of the first articulations of Black feminism.

The book advanced a vision of self-determination through education and social uplift for African-American women. Its central thesis was that the educational, moral, and spiritual progress of black women would improve the general standing of the entire African American community.

She says that the violent natures of men often run counter to the goals of higher education, so it is important to foster more female intellectuals because they will bring more elegance to education. This view was criticized by some as submissive to the 19th-century cult of true womanhood, but others label it as one of the most important arguments for black feminism in the 19th century.

Cooper advanced the view that it was the duty of educated and successful black women to support their underprivileged peers in achieving their goals. The essays in A Voice from the South also touched on a variety of topics, such as race and racism, gender, the socioeconomic realities of black families, and the administration of the Episcopal Church.

Source: Hutchinson, Louise Daniel (1981). Anna J. Cooper, A Voice From the South. Washington: Anacostia Neighborhood Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. OCLC 07462546.
"George Washington Cooper". Geni. 2015. Retrieved December 27, 2018.

""This Scholarly and Colored Alumna": Transcriptions of Anna Julia Cooper's Correspondence with Oberlin College". www2.oberlin.edu. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
Robbins, Hollis; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., eds. (2017). The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers. New York: Penguin. p. 414. ISBN 9780143105992. OCLC 951070652.
"Foundations of African-American Sociology". Hampton University Department of Sociology. Hampton University. Archived from the original on March 6, 2017. Retrieved March 5, 2017. From Melvin Barber; Leslie Innis; Emmit Hunt, African American Contributions to Sociology
"Anna Julia Cooper, 1858-1964". The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice. The Archives of the Episcopal Church DFMS/PECUSA. 2008. Retrieved August 26, 2016.
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. "Anna J. Cooper 1858-1964". Retrieved December 26, 2018.
Giles, Mark S. (Fall 2006). "Special Focus: Dr. Anna Julia Cooper, 1858–1964: Teacher, Scholar, and Timeless Womanist". The Journal of Negro Education. 75 (4): 621–634. JSTOR 40034662.
Hutchison (1981). A Voice from the South. pp. 26–27.
Martin-Felton, Zora (2000). A Woman of Courage: The Story of Anna J. Cooper. Washington: Education Department, Anacostia Neighborhood Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. p. 14. OCLC 53457649.
Catalogue of St. Augustine's Normal School, 1882–99. Internet Archive. Raleigh (N.C.): St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute. 1899. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
Dyson, Zita E. (2017) [c. 1931]. "Mrs. Anna J. Cooper".
Gabel, Leona (1982). From Slavery to the Sorbonne and Beyond: The Life and Writings of Anna J. Cooper. Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College. p. 19. ISBN 0-87391-028-1.
Evans, Stephanie Y. (2008). Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850–1954: An Intellectual History. University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-4520-7.
Smith, Jessie Carney (1992). "Josephine Beall Bruce". Notable Black American women (v1 ed.). Gale Research Inc. p. 123. OCLC 34106990.
Busby, Margaret, "Anna J. Cooper", Daughters of Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 136.
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