Anna J. Cooper

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anna Julia Cooper (born August 10, 1858 in Raleigh , North Carolina, USA, as Anna Julia Haywood ; died February 27, 1964 in Washington, DC ) was an African-American activist , author, and educator . Although she was born a slave, she received a good education and received her PhD in history from the Sorbonne in 1925 . She was the fourth African American woman to earn a PhD and was also an important member of the African American community in Washington, DC Cooper made an important contribution to the social sciences, especially sociology, and is also known as the "mother of black feminism."

Anna J. Cooper

Life

Childhood and youth

Anna "Annie" Julia Haywood was born a slave in 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina. She and her mother, Hannah Stanley Haywood, were house slaves of George Washington Haywood (1802-1890), prosecutor for Wake County and son of John Haywood, the senior treasurer of North Carolina and co-founder of the local university. Anna's father was likely either George or his brother Dr. Fabius Haywood, in whose household Anna's older brother Andrew was a slave. Her mother refused to clarify paternity. Besides Andrew, Anna had a second older brother, Rufus, who became the leader of Stanley's Band .

Anna J. Cooper (between 1888 and 1889)

After the end of the American Civil War (1861–65) and the abolition of slavery throughout the United States, nine-year-old Anna received a scholarship in 1868 and began her education at the newly opened Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute . This was established by the local diocese to train teachers to teach former enslaved people. During her 14 years at St. Augustine's, Anna distinguished herself as an ambitious student, equally gifted in the liberal arts and analytical disciplines. Her subjects included languages ​​(Latin, French, Greek), English literature, math and science. Although the school offered a special "ladies' course" and the administration discouraged women from attending higher courses, Cooper's outstanding academic performance earned her the right to take them. The educational focus of the school was on the preparation of young men for clergy and for additional training at four-year universities. One of these male students, George AC Cooper, became Anna's husband in 1877. He died in 1879 after only two years of marriage.

Teaching and studying

After the death of her husband, she enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio , where she again attended the men's course and graduated in 1884. Due to her professional qualifications, she was immediately admitted as a sophomore student . Cooper often tried to take four instead of the required three courses. Her black fellow students included Ida Gibbs (later Hunt ) and Mary Church Terrell . Cooper was a member of the LLS in Oberlin , one of the two literary societies for women that regularly hosted lectures by distinguished speakers as well as performances by singers and orchestras. She earned an MA in mathematics in 1887.

Cooper's excellent academic performance enabled her to work as a tutor and later as a teacher for younger students at St. Augustine's. Through this activity she was able to pay for her education expenses. In the 1883–84 school year she taught classical philology, modern history, advanced English, and vocal and instrumental music. After a brief teaching activity at Wilberforce College , Cooper returned to St. Augustine's School in 1885, where she worked as a "teacher of classical philology, rhetoric, etc." in the 1885-86 school year.

M Street High School in Washington, DC

A few years after graduating, Cooper moved to Washington, DC, where she taught Latin at M Street High School and became principal in 1901. Later she got into a controversy about the different attitudes towards black upbringing because she advocated a model of classical upbringing advocated by WEB Du Bois , "which is supposed to prepare suitable students for higher education and management positions", and not for the professional training program sponsored by Booker T. Washington . As a result, she dropped out of M Street High School , but was recalled to in 1910.

Commitment to civil and women's rights

Former home of Anna J. Cooper in Washington, DC

In 1892, Anna Cooper founded the Colored Women's League with Helen Appo Cook, Ida B. Bailey, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Mary Jane Peterson, Mary Church Terrell, and Evelyn Shaw , whose primary goals were the advancement of African Americans and social progress. Helen Cook was elected President. Cooper published her first book A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South (1892) that same year . The essays in it are considered early written documents of black feminism. In addition to 'race', racism and gender, she also deals with topics such as the socio-economic reality of black families and the administration of the Episcopal Church . The book is shaped by a vision of self-determination through education, which should lead to the social advancement of African American women. Their central thesis is that the educational, moral, and spiritual advancement of Black women would improve the image of the entire African American community. Cooper believed that it was the duty of educated and successful Black women to help their underprivileged peers to achieve their goals. She writes that the violent nature of men often runs counter to the goals of higher education. That is why it is important to encourage more female intellectuals. This view has been criticized by some for being too strongly trapped in the “ Cult of True Womanhood ” of the 19th century; considered by others to be one of the most important arguments for the rise of black feminism.

Cooper also gave several speeches advocating civil and women's rights in the 1890s, such as: B. "The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation" at the World's Congress of Representative Women 1893 in Chicago . She was one of five African American women - along with Fannie Barrier Williams, Sarah Jane Woodson Early, Hallie Quinn Brown, and Fanny Jackson Coppin - invited to speak at the event.

In 1900 she made her first trip to Europe to attend the Pan-African Congress in London. She gave a lecture there entitled "The Negro Problem in America." After visiting the cathedral cities in Scotland and England, she went to the World Exhibition in Paris. After a week at the exhibition, she went to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play , and from there to Munich and a few other German cities. Afterwards she went to Italy, where she visited Rome, Naples, Venice, Pompeii, Vesuvius and Florence.

PhD and late years

In 1914, at the age of 56, Cooper began taking courses for her doctoral degree at Columbia University . However, she had to drop out of college in 1915 when she adopted the five children of her late half-brother after their mother died. She later moved to the University of Paris-Sorbonne , which did not accept her Columbia dissertation, an edition of Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne . She worked for over a decade on her new dissertation “The Attitude of France on the Question of Slavery Between 1789 and 1848”, which she finally defended in 1925 at the age of 65. She was the fourth black woman in American history to earn a PhD in philosophy. Her work was published in an anthology of Medieval French Literature and requested for the classroom and bookstore at Harvard.

Cooper's resignation from Washington Colored High School in 1930 did not end her political activism. The same year she retired, she assumed the office of President of Frelinghuysen University , which was founded to provide instruction to working African American residents of DC who did not have access to higher education. Cooper worked for Frelinghuysen for twenty years, first as president and then as registrar. She left school only a decade before she died in 1964 at the age of 105. Her funeral took place in a chapel on the campus of Saint Augustine's College in Raleigh, where her academic career began. She was buried there with her husband in the city cemetery.

Publications

  • A Voice From the South . Aldine Printing House, Xenia, Ohio 1892.
    • New editions:
      • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library 2017. ISBN 978-1-4696-3331-2 .
      • With an introduction by Janet Neary. Dover Publications, Mineola, New York 2016. ISBN 978-0-486-80563-4 .
      • Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including a Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters . Edited by Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 1998. ISBN 978-1-299-79051-3 .
      • With an introduction by Mary Helen Washington. Oxford University Press, New York 1990. ISBN 978-0-19-506323-3 .
  • Loss of Speech through Isolation (essay). In: Sketches from a Teacher's Notebook (1923). Available online at Quotidiana.org .
  • Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne . With an introduction by Félix Klein. A. Lahure, Paris 1925. OCLC 459410541.
  • L'Attitude de la France à L'égard de l'Esclavage Pendant la Révolution . Imprimerie de la Cour d'Appel, Paris 1925. (Dissertation)
    • Slavery and the French Revolutionists 1788-1805. Translated into English and with an introduction by Frances Richardson Keller. Edwin Mellen, Lewiston & Queenston 1988. ISBN 978-0-88946-637-1 .
    • Slavery and the French and Haitian Revolutionists . Edited and translated into English by Frances Richardson Keller. 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2006. ISBN 978-0-7425-4474-1 .
  • This Scholarly and Colored Alumna: Anna Julia Cooper's Troubled Relationship with Oberlin College. Transcriptions of Anna Julia Cooper's Correspondence 1926–1941 . Edited by Katherine Shilton. Oberlin 2003. OCLC 55481008.

Honors

  • Anna Cooper, along with Elizabeth Evelyn Wright , will be honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on February 28th .
  • In 2009 the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in honor of Cooper.
  • Also in 2009, a free private middle school opened and named in her honor: the Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School on historic Church Hill in Richmond , Virginia
  • In 2012, the Anna Julia Cooper Center on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South at Wake Forest University was founded in her honor , but in 2019, after a conflict between the university and the center's founder and president, Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry , was closed again.
  • Pages 24 and 25 of the United States Passport (2016) contain the following quote from Anna Julia Cooper: “The cause of freedom is not a matter of race or sect, party or class - it is the matter of humanity, the birthright of humanity itself. "(in the original:" The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class - it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity. ")

literature

  • African American Review Vol. 43, No. 1, Spring 2009 - Special Section about Anna Julia Cooper:
    • Shirley Moody-Turner: Preface: Anna Julia Cooper: A Voice beyond the South , pp. 7–9.
    • Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Black Feminist Studies: The Case of Anna Julia Cooper , pp. 11-15.
    • Vivian M. May: Writing the Self into Being: Anna Julia Cooper's Textual Politics , pp. 17-34.
    • Shirley Moody-Turner, James Stewart: Gendering Africana Studies: Insights from Anna Julia Cooper , pp. 35–44.
    • Karen A. Johnson, “ In Service for the Common Good,” Anna Julia Cooper and Adult Education , pp. 45-56.
    • Shirley Moody-Turner: A Voice beyond the South: Resituating the Locus of Cultural Representation in the Later Writings of Anna Julia Cooper , pp. 57-67.
  • Karen Elene Baker-Fletcher: A "Singing Something": The Literature of Anna Julia Cooper as a Resource for a Theological Anthropology of Voice . Harvard University, Boston 1991 [Ph. D. thesis]. OCLC 24616784.
  • Carl A. Grant, Keffrelyn D. Brown, Anthony L. Brown: Black Intellectual Thought in Education: The Missing Traditions of Anna Julia Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and Alain Leroy Locke . Routledge, New York 2016. ISBN 978-1-136-17284-7 .
  • Louise Daniel Hutchinson: Anna J. Cooper: A Voice From the South . Smithsonian institution Press for the Anacostia neighborhood museum, Washington, DC, 1981. ISBN 978-0-87474-528-3 .
  • Karen A. Johnson: Uplifting the Women and the Race: The Educational Philosophies and Social Activism of Anna Julia Cooper and Nannie Helen Burroughs . Routledge, London / New York 2016. ISBN 978-1-138-99397-6 .
  • Vivian M. May: Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction . Routledge, New York 2007. ISBN 978-0-415-95642-0 .

Web links

Commons : Anna J. Cooper  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hollis Robbins , Henry Louis Gates Jr .: The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers . Ed .: Penguin. New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-14-310599-2 , pp. 414 .
  2. ^ Hannah Giorgis: How Black Suffragettes Subverted the Domestic Sphere. In: The Atlantic . August 18, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020 .
  3. ^ Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, 1858-1964. In: The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice. The Archives of the Episcopal Church DFMS / PECUSA. Retrieved May 21, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b Mark S. Giles: Special Focus: Dr. Anna Julia Cooper, 1858–1964: Teacher, Scholar, and Timeless Womanist . In: The Journal of Negro Education . tape 75 , no. 4 , 2006, p. 621-634 , JSTOR : 40034662 .
  5. ^ Hutchison: A Voice from the South . 1981, p. 26-27 .
  6. ^ Zora Martin-Felton: A Woman of Courage: The Story of Anna J. Cooper . Ed .: Education Department, Anacostia Neighborhood Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington 2000, OCLC 53457649 , p. 14 .
  7. ↑ a b c Zita E. Dyson: Biographical Sketch. Howard University, October 2017, accessed May 21, 2020 .
  8. ^ A b Leona Gabel: From Slavery to the Sorbonne and Beyond: The Life and Writings of Anna J. Cooper . Ed .: Smith College. Northampton, Massachusetts 1982, ISBN 0-87391-028-1 , pp. 19 .
  9. ^ Raleigh (NC): St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute (ed.): Catalog of St. Augustine's Normal School, 1882-99 . 1899 ( online ).
  10. ↑ a b Busby, Margaret , "Anna J. Cooper", Daughters of Africa , London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 136.
  11. ↑ Jessie Carney Smith: Notable Black American women . Ed .: Gale Research Inc. v1 edition. 1992, OCLC 34106990 , Josephine Beall Bruce, p. 123 (English).
  12. ^ Mary Helen Washington: A Voice from the South: Introduction . Ed .: Oxford University Press. New York 1988, ISBN 978-0-19-506323-3 , pp. xxvii – liv .
  13. ↑ a b Joy Ritchie, Kate Ronald: Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric (s) . Ed .: University of Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh, PA 2001, ISBN 978-0-8229-5753-9 , pp. 163-164 .
  14. ^ May Wright Sewall, ed .: The World's Congress of Representative Women . Ed .: Rand McNally. Chicago 1894, p. 711-715 ( online ).
  15. ^ Sylvester Williams. In: Spartacus Educational. Retrieved May 21, 2020 .
  16. ^ "This Scholarly and Colored Alumna": Transcriptions of Anna Julia Cooper's Correspondence with Oberlin College. In: www2.oberlin.edu. Retrieved April 18, 2019 .
  17. ↑ Anna Julia Cooper's Bio - Anna Julia Cooper Project. Retrieved April 18, 2019 (American English).
  18. ↑ Dr Anna Julia Haywood Cooper. In: Find a Grave . November 9, 2008, accessed May 21, 2020 .
  19. ^ The Liturgical Calendar. In: The Episcopal Church. Retrieved May 23, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Anna Julia Cooper Immortalized on Postage. In: United States Postal Service. June 11, 2009, accessed May 21, 2020 .
  21. ^ School History, " Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School.
  22. ↑ Monica Levitan: Juilliard Liberal Arts Faculty Write Letter of Support for Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry. In: Diverse Issues in Higher Education. February 5, 2019, accessed May 21, 2020 .
  23. ↑ Kate Kelly: Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964), Only Woman Quoted in Current US Passport. In: Huffpost . February 17, 2012, accessed May 21, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Cooper, Anna J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cooper, Anna Julia (full name); Haywood, Anna Julia (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African American activist, writer, and educator
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Raleigh , North Carolina, USA,
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1964
Place of death Washington, DC