Dr.Anna Julia Cooper was a Leo woman like me & she was an African-American woman who cared deeply about the advancement of the black female! Born a slave,she was so intellectually gifted that she was accepted into a teaching program at the age of 7! She was a firm believer & fighter for the rights of black women.Here's more on one woman that you should know about from BNET:
"Cooper's life spanned several distinct eras that covered profound social, political, and economic changes in the American social order, during which Black Americans remained a marginalized group actively struggling for social justice and equal citizenship rights. At the time of her birth, the majority of Blacks in America lived trapped within the institution of slavery. At the time of her death, Blacks were on the forefront of political and social activism fighting for citizenship and human rights through the collective efforts of the Civil Rights Movement. The notion of collective struggle for social justice and human rights transcends this time span.
Although not as well known as many of her peer leaders and intellectuals, such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington, Cooper articulated a strong-willed activist position. Cooper blazed many trails in educational and social activist settings. For example, her social activism included participation in several national Black women clubs and charity organizations; she co-founded the Colored Women's League in Washington, DC in 1894, and helped organi/e the National Conference of Colorado Women in 1895. Cooper attended and delivered a stirring speech at the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900 (Lemert & Bhan, 1998; Roediger, 1998).
Cooper's lifestyle reflected her Victorian upbringing and in many ways modeled notions of true womanhood. She carefully followed the moral proprieties and strictures of her era, yet vigorously supported the intellectual vibrancy of women and the need to agitate for women rights, specifically the rights of Black women. Most of all, she believed in Black women possessing and exercising a political and cultural "voice." Shirley Carlson (1992) noted a difference between the norm of true womanhood and the version she describes as "Black Victoria." Black Victoria's perception and expectations were slightly different from the larger society's conception due the emphasis placed on her by the Black community. Carlson considered Black Victoria as possessing a high level of "community and racial consciousness" (p. 62). This analysis describes Cooper. She believed in the transformative power of education and intentionally devoted her professional life to the educational and professional advancement of the Black community.
ANNA JULIA COOPER
"Annie" Julia Hay wood was born into slavery on August 10, 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina (Gable, 1982). Born five years before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, her memories of slavery were recounted in her later life in vaguely written recollections (Hutchinson, 1861). Her mother, Hannah Stanley Haywood, was the mother of two older sons by a wealthy slave owner, who sold, or loaned, Hannah to his brother George Washington Haywood, a prominent Raleigh attorney, who was most likely Anna's father (Cooper, 1988; Gable, 1982; Hutchinson, 1981). Hannah worked as a domestic servant in the Haywood home, a position which commonly included sexual abuse from White slave masters (Gable, 1982; Gates, 1987; Stevenson, 1996). Thus, Cooper was born to a familiar union between master and slave that might have added a sense of desperate determination to her future endeavors.
Cooper held her mother in high esteem, commenting in an autobiographical sketch,
My mother was a slave and the finest woman I have ever known. . . .Presumably my father was her master, if so I owe him not a sou & she was always too modest & [sic] shamefaced ever to mention him. (Cooper,. 1988, p. xxxi)
This declaration makes plain the personal shame and conflicted distance Cooper held regarding her paternal heritage. Perhaps her life-long efforts to represent exemplary personal and professional behavior were a result of her resistance to the typical assumption and stereotypes of immorality and low intelligence of Black women. Regardless of any deeply ingrained personal shame over the circumstances of her birth, throughout her adult life Cooper remained a strong voice for Black women' rights. She became a foreshadowing matriarch of Black feminist theory."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the article in its entirety here.
Here's an excerpt from a speech that Anna Julia Cooper gave in 1893 from Black Past.org:
"(1893) Anna Julia Cooper, “ Women's Cause is One and Universal”
On May 18, 1893, Anna Julia Cooper delivered an address at the World's Congress of Representative Women then meeting in Chicago. Cooper’s speech to this predominately white audience described the progress of African American women since slavery. Cooper in many ways epitomized that progress. Born into slavery in North Carolina in 1858, she earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at Oberlin and in 1925 at that age of 67 she received a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in Paris. Cooper spent much of her career at an instructor of Latin and mathematics at M Street (later Dunbar) High School in Washington, D.C. She died in 1964. Cooper’s speech appears below.
The higher fruits of civilization can not be extemporized, neither can they be developed normally, in the brief space of thirty years. It requires the long and painful growth of generations. Yet all through the darkest pe¬riod of the colored women's oppression in this country her yet unwritten history is full of heroic struggle, a struggle against fearful and overwhelming odds, that often ended in a horrible death, to maintain and protect that which woman holds dearer than life.
The painful, patient, and silent toil of mothers to gain a free simple title to the bodies of their daughters, the de¬spairing fight, as of an entrapped tigress, to keep hallowed their own persons, would furnish material for epics. That more went down under the flood than stemmed the current is not extraordinary. The majority of our women are not heroines but I do not know that a majority of any race of women are heroines. It is enough for me to know that while in the eyes of the highest tribunal in America she was deemed no more than a chattel, an irresponsible thing, a dull block, to be drawn hither or thither at the volition of an owner, the Afro American woman maintained ideals of womanhood unshamed by any ever conceived. Resting or fermenting in untutored minds, such ideals could not claim a hearing at the bar of the nation.
The white woman could least plead for her own emancipation; the black woman, doubly enslaved, could but suffer and struggle and be silent. I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history, and there her destiny evolving. Since emancipation the movement has been at times confused and stormy, so that we could not always tell whether we were going forward or groping in a circle. We hardly knew what we ought to emphasize, whether education or wealth, or civil freedom and recognition. We were utterly destitu¬te. Possessing no homes nor the knowledge of how to make them, no money nor the habit of acquiring it, no education, no political status, no in¬fluence, what could we do?"(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.
Our history must never be forgotten!
