Anna Julia Cooper

The life of Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) affords rich opportunities for studying the developments in African-American and Ameri can life during the century following emancipation. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Cooper's life is framed by especially momentous years in U.S. history: the final years of slavery and the climactic years of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. Cooper's eclect ic and influential career mirrored the times. Although her life was privileged in relation to those of the majority of African-Americans, Cooper shared in the experiences of wrenching change, elevating promise, and heart-breaking disappointment. She was accordingly able to be an organic and committed intellectual whose eloquent speech was ensnarled in her concern for the future of African-Americans.

Anna Julia Haywood was born into slavery to Hannah Stanley Haywood and her master, George Washington Haywood, in 1858.1 At the age of nine, she enrolled in St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute for free Blacks. Cooper married St. Augustine graduate George Cooper, in 1877. His death in 1879 "ironically allowed her to pursue a ca reer as a teacher, whereas no married woman—black or white—could continue to teach."2 Cooper received a Bachelor's and a Master's degree from Oberlin College, and was first recruited to teach in 1887. She taught at M Street High School, Washingto n's only black high school, for many years, and was the subject of public controversy because of her educational philosophy.

In 1915, and in her mid-fifties, Cooper adopted the five orphaned grandchildren of her half-brother. In order to do this, sh e had to interrupt the doctoral studies that she had undertaken at Columbia University. In 1925, Cooper finally received her doctorate, from the University of Paris, thereby becoming the fourth African-American woman to receive that degree. Cooper's wri ting style changed as her life went on and she was not able to write consistently, but she did continue writing well into her eighties.3

Cooper's writings and life expressed her strong social concerns. Indeed, on a college questionnaire in 19 32, she wrote that her chief cultural interest was "the education of the underprivileged."4 This commitment is exhibited beyond her work as an educator and extends to the conscientiousness that infected her scholarship and her social activism. < h3>Development of a Feminist Critique

The first account that Cooper gives of her struggle against sexism is from her teenage years. She relates in "her first and only full-length book"5, A Voice from the South by a Blac k Woman from the South (1892), her protestation to the principal of St. Augustine's concerning the treatment of women in the school. One gets the sense that her strong convictions and deep feelings on the subject commenced to emerge even at that youn g age:

A boy, however meager his equipment and shallow his pretensions, had only to declare a floating intention to study theology and he could get all the support, encouragement and stimulus he needed, be absolved from work and invested beforehand with all the dignity of his far away office. While a self-supporting girl had to struggle on by teaching in the summer and working after school hours to keep up with her board bills, and actually to fight her way against positive discouragements to the higher education. 6

Cooper's disappointment must certainly have been made more acute by her strong attraction to learning. Her appreciation of the beauty of learning inspired her to attempt writing in a voice that would be expansive enou gh to endure beyond her immediate time and circumstances: such writing is composed "as naturally, as instinctively, as and as irresistibly as a bird sings—with no thought of an audience—singing because it loves to sing,--singing because God, nature, truth sings through it."7 In Voice from the South, Cooper is able to express her political convictions through this expansive approach. Her skill leaves little doubt that she was largely successful in overcoming the "discouragements" tha t she had encountered when young, and that these challenges had sharpened her sense of justice. For instance:

It is not the intelligent woman vs. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman vs. the black, the brown, and the red,--it is not even the cause of woman vs. man. Nay, 'tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice. It would be subversive of every human interest that the cry of one-half the human family be stifled.8

Eliza beth Alexander argues that Cooper's style was central to her struggle to find acceptance as an African American female intellectual. Specifically, Cooper's use of the first person lends vividness and immediacy to her work. It also asserts her right to i nterpret her own 9: "I ask the men and women who are teachers and co-workers for the highest interests of the race, that they give the girls a chance."10

Despite overcoming certain sign ificant barriers, Cooper could not escape her social context, and sexism tinged the reception of her work. Even African American men, who also suffered greatly under prevailing social conventions, were not wholly sympathetic to her work. In the same yea r that Cooper's book was published, Frederick Douglass said that he had "thus far seen no book of importance written by a negro woman and I know of no one among us who can appropriately called famous."11 In DuBois' On the Damnation of Women , he stands against sexism, but does not address the scholarly work of Black women. In fact, he attributes a particularly powerful passage written Cooper (see top of page) to "one of our women."12

The rigidities of gender and racial categoriz ation clearly limited Cooper's opportunities. But due to her determination and inventiveness, those challenges became central to her social activism.

Social Activism

Anna Julia Cooper was a lecturer and organizer. She spoke at the 1893 World's Congress of Representative Women as well as the 1900 Pan-African Congress Conference in London.13 The first person style that can be seen in Cooper's writing is a reflection of her familiarity with the spoken word as a form of political and scholarly communication.14

Cooper's communication skills must have served her well in her role as a social organizer. In 1905, she helped found the Colored Women's YWCA.15 This was part of a national trend of the establi shment of clubs and organizations in which Black women took leadership roles. The leaders of these organizations

were activists as well as intellectuals: They worked as teachers, lecturers, social workers, journalists, and in women's clubs. Th ey were more committed to the idea of uplift that to their own personal advancement, partly because they could not isolate themselves from the problems of poor black women. 16

Specifically, Cooper helped t o found the "colored" YWCA in Washington, D.C. in 1912. In part due to the segregationist policies of the white YMCA's, African-American organizations had limited resources. Despite this limitation, the Washington, D.C. YWCA founders and members "built an organization that was the epitome of efficiency, self-reliance, and resourcefulness that was cited as a model for the nation". This challenges to these organizations, as well as their level of determination is dramatically illustrated by the events th at took place during World War I. Then, the YMCA and YWCA

sought to deal with the challenge of thousands of African American soldier, sailors, and job-seekers flooding into a town where racial segregation was rife, adequate accommodations few, a nd opportunities for honest black folks to get into trouble bewilderingly plentiful. 17

T he question of the relationship of this new "elite" to the "masses" was crucial to the story of Black America at that time, as it continues to be. Cooper's career as a professional educator shed additional light of the question of her view of the potenti al of Black people in America, and also raises new problems for constructing a consistent picture of Cooper's life. Despite these doubts, it is certain that those debates had a dramatic impact on Cooper's career.

Education

Philosophies of the Time

At the time that Cooper's teaching career began, a debate raged over the path to progress for the African American community. Its most prominent figures were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Washington wa s a proponent of a technically based education that was based upon the assumption that Blacks would need to work their way up through society by finding an anchor in manual labor. He has met heated criticism because of his insistence that political prote st diffused the resources of the Black community and would be counterproductive to change by angering powerful whites. DuBois was supportive of sharp political criticism of the status quo, and championed the meaning and power of higher education, albeit with certain elitist tendencies: "The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people."19 W.E.B. DuBois Virtual University

Up From Slavery

Anna Julia Cooper's Career

In 1887, Cooper began her teaching career at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. It was the only bla ck high school in the city, and was therefore of central interest. Cooper became the school's principal in 1902, a time when Washington's philosophy was "emerging as the model for black education and was consequently playing into the prejudices of whites who believed in black intellectual inferiority"20.

Cooper, however, resisted this trend. She insisted on preparing students for college. She sent students to prominent universities such as Harvard, Brown, Oberlin, Yale, Amherst, Dartmouth, and Radcliffe. The Washington, D.C. elites could not stomach this, and Cooper eventually became embroiled in the "M Street School Controversy". In 1905, the DC Board of Education dismissed her for minor infractions, some of which reflect the elitist an d racial prejudices of the school board members21.

Annette Eaton provides insight into the atmosphere of racial and gender hostility that pervaded Washington, D.C. at the time:

If you could only smell or feel or in any way sense the a ura of D.C. in those days, you would know that it only took her daring in having her students accepted and given scholarship at Ivy League schools to know that the white power structure would be out to get her for any reason or for no reason.22

Testimony to Cooper's teaching acumen is found in the fact that she was invited back to the school, as a Latin teacher, in 1910. Neither did her commitment to study wane as she journeyed through her fifties and into her sixties. In 1 924, she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, Slavery and the French Revolutionists, at the University of Paris, becoming the fourth African American woman to gain a Ph.D. In fact, Cooper wrote through much of the 1940's, even as she approach ed the age of ninety.24

Cooper's long career as an educator is proof of the anchoring of her vision and brilliance in the concrete social challenges of her day. Her fierce commitment to her students is evidenced by her willingness to suffer p ublic censure for them and to challenge the dominant personalities of the day because of her convictions.

Conclusion

The Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement framed the one hundred and five years of the life of Anna Jul ia Cooper. Unfortunately, racism and sexism also framed her life. Both had brutal and painfully confining impacts upon her, directly, and through the lives of those around her. That she was able to achieve as much as she did under these circumstances i s inspiring for all people. Cooper's commitment to social change was the bedrock upon which her success was built.

That Cooper was not empowered to achieve more is a loss to us all. All of Cooper's limitations can be viewed in this light. Even her elitism can be recognized as a manifestation of the slippery slope upon which her empowerment rested.

Cooper's work as a writer, scholar, educator, and activist is evidence of the tremendous energy demanded of those who wanted to create change in th e Black community during the tumultuous period in which she lived. Anna Julia Cooper's greatest legacy to us is in her ability to successfully balance all of these roles, as well as her challenging personal life. Cooper's life extends to all of us the ho pe that we will all be able to navigate the terrain of discrimination and segregation, to become great despite its difficulty, and eventually to change its contours through our collective progress.

Bibliography

Books

Alexander, Elizabeth. " 'We Must Be About Our Father's Business': Anna Julia Cooper and the In-Corporation of the Nineteenth Century African-American Woman Intellectual." In Her Own Voice: Nineteenth Century American Women Essayists. Ed. Sherry Lee Linkon. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997. 61-80.

Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice From the South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Cooper, Anna Julia. Cover pages. When and Where I Enter : The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. By Paula Giddings. New York: W. Morrow, 1984.

Washington, Mary Helen. Introduction. A Voice From the South. By Anna Julia Cooper. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. xxvii-liv.

Other Sources

The Learning Center. Black Women, World War I, and Washington, D.C. Internet: http://www.erols.com/tdpedu/lectures/bkwomww1.htm. Acce ssed 11/22/98.

Footnotes

0 Cooper, from When and Where I Enter
1 Washington xxxi.
2 Ibid. xxxii.
3 Ibid. xxxix.
4 Ibid. li.
5 Ibid. xxviii.
6 Ibid. xxxii.
7 Cooper, A Voice, 181.
8 Washington xiv.
9 Alexander 68-69.
10 Cooper, A Voice, 79.
11 Washington xl.
12 Ibid. xlii.
13 Ibi d. xxvii.
14 Alexander 69.
15 Washington xxvii.
16 Washington l.
17 The Learning Center
18 Washington xxx.
19 Alexander 66.
20 Washington xxxiii-iv.
21 Ibid. xxxiv-v.
22 Ibid. xxxiv.
23 Ibid. xxxv-vi.
24 Ibid. xxxix.