Today’s blog post is about a North Carolinian most North Carolinians have never heard of. Such is the way that women and people of color have been left out of our history books.
Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was born in slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina on August 10, 1858. She never knew who her father was. This wonderful photograph of her can be found at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016702852/.
Photo from Library of Congress website.
After the slaves were emancipated, she enrolled in St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh. The school was supported by the Freedmen’s Bureau and was created to educate black people to become teachers. A local pastor made it financially possible for her to attend the school.
She was not just any student. She went to school at St. Augustine’s for 14 years and took every course offered, including the ones that had only been open to male students.
She graduated in 1877 and married George A.C. Cooper, a theology student at St. Augustine’s from the Bahamas. Unfortunately, George died in 1879.
Cooper taught at St. Augustine’s for two more years after her husband’s death until she was accepted for study at Oberlin College in Ohio. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin in 1884 and an honorary Master’s degree there in 1887.
She started teaching at the M Street Washington High School in Washington, D.C. in 1887, and became more involved in social activism after moving to the nation’s capital. She was an advocate for black students to have college opportunities.
Cooper’s book, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South, was published in 1892. It is acclaimed as the first book-length work about black feminism. She put forth the theory that black women were in the unique position of having to face discrimination due to their gender and the color of their skin. (I’m sure Dr. Cooper would be distressed to know that they are still in that position in 2026!)
Cooper helped found the Colored Women’s League of Washington, D.C. in 1892 and served as the corresponding secretary. At the First National Conference of Colored Women of America in Boston in 1895, Cooper was a delegate. She delivered a paper calling for organization of black people at the conference. The National Federation of Afro-American Women no doubt came about in response to the Boston conference. Cooper took an active role in that organization.
In 1900, Cooper spoke at the Pan-African Conference in London, but she focused her efforts in her own community in Washington, D.C. where she became the principal of the M Street High School.
She and W.E.B. DuBois had similar theories about race, but DuBois and Booker T. Washington locked horns. Cooper moved to Missouri for a while to get away from their political differences. She returned to M Street High School in 1911.
In case you aren’t sufficiently impressed by Anna Julia Haywood Cooper…
In 1912, she went to Paris and finished translating Le Pèleringae de Charlemagne. She studied at Columbia University for several summers and then completed her Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in Paris, thus becoming the fourth black American woman to earn a Ph.D. Her doctoral thesis about slavery and the French Revolution was translated into English in 1988.
Dr. Cooper became president of Frelinghuysen University in Washington, D.C. in 1929. She gave the university her home for its permanent site. The “Hannah Stanley Opportunity School” at the university was named for Dr. Cooper’s mother.
Dr. Cooper died at the age of 105 on February 27, 1964. She and her husband were buried in City Cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina.
My March 20, 2026 blog post
When I posted a blog titled “Puzzling Banners at Dept. of Education” on March 20, 2026, Ni of ShiraDestProjectDoBetter (shiradest.wordpress.com) reminded me that Dr. Anna Julia Haywood Cooper’s image should have been on one of the banners hanging on the U.S. Department of Education headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
(To jog your memory, in my post I questioned why in the world Charlie Kirk’s image was on one of the banners. I never did figure that one out!)
Ni was exactly right. Dr. Anna Julia Haywood Cooper’s image should have been honored there alongside Booker T. Washington and Catharine Beecher.
Janet
Never take access to higher education for granted.
Janet's Writing Blog 
Ironic. My original college was the Radford State Normal for White Women, also originally a Teachers College. Just the opposite of the one for Blacks that this lady attended.
WOW!! What an incredibly accomplished woman! There aren’t superlatives enough.
That is ironic! The more I read about her accomplishments, the more I felt like a slug.
I agree, Liz! Every time I thought I’d read about the zenith of her accomplishments, I was proven wrong. It never ended.
A truly impressive woman. It is wonderful to read about people like her. This is a most enjoyable and informative post, thank you Janet! All the best to you!
Thank you, Francis. I was quite impressed by this woman and her accomplishments in a world and time that expected nothing from her.
So true Janet. This is an example of how important history is and how important it is to teach it to the coming generations. Your posts are always so very valuable. All the best from a hot, but breezy Aegean coast.
There is so much to learn from history. It is maddening how Trump and his cult followers are re-writing and hiding history. I’m working on a blog post about how the U.S. Department of the Interior has removed signage and exhibits at national parks and national monuments. I’ll probably save it for October in the weeks leading up to the election. Did you hear/read that he even had a sign put up outside at least one of the museums of the Smithsonian warning visitors that some of what they would read and see inside is not true? Fascist playbook! Tell the people they can’t believe their own eyes and ears. Take down everything negative about the country (i.e., slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, how the Native Americans were/are treated.) Two and one-half more years of this carnage! Sorry for my rant. It’s in the mid-90s here. We’re having thunderstorms almost every afternoon and night. We need the rain, but our computer could do without the lightning. It’s been thundering for the last hour, like it’s building up for a bad storm. Meanwhile, we’ve had a half dozen deer in our yard this afternoon. They’re eating the grass, the lily-of-the-valley foliage, the azaleas, etc. Never a dull moment. I only have about 50 more pages to read and I’ll be through with my novel draft read-through. I already have seven pages of corrections/things to check/things to re-write/things to research. It’s been an eye-opening process, and I look forward to the next phase. All the best from North Carolina.
Yes, it is truly incredible that he is getting away with such disturbing changes and misinformation, well, basically lies. I cannot imagine how weak the rest of the government is. So, six deer in your yard. Amazing! It makes for an interesting day, at least full of surprises. It is also hot in these parts, but we are on the water and that always changes the weather situation. It is breezy, although we have had to use the a/c more than usual this summer, and we probably will continue to make use of it. The heat waves in Europe just do not stop. I know I lived in Miami and I am used to hot weather, but in Miami everybody was always in a/c, at home, the car, work, stores, everywhere. At my flat I never turned off the climate control system, all year long, and it had to stay on even when one was off on holiday otherwise you would find your flat full of mould. Well, wish you the best with the corrections. It might be tedious but it should also be interesting. and possibly even enlightening. All the best from the Aegean Sea on the cost of Turkey.
I hope you got to see at least the partial solar eclipse today. I didn’t see how close the path was to where you are. It sounded like Valencia was a great place to see it. Just your luck, eh? The joke is on me with my novel…. This afternoon I finished the read-through of the first draft — all 283 pages. A few minutes later I came across some changes I had made in a revised outline in April. It had completely slipped my mind! So to follow the revised outline — which really is an improvement to the plot — it will be back to the drawing board tomorrow to start plugging in some major changes and tweak the ending. I just had to laugh at myself. It’s all good. Stay cool. Miami is a nice place to visit, but I don’t think I’d like that kind of heat and humidity year-round.
Right, just my luck the eclipse had to be when I was away from Valencia! Oh well, maybe next time. Well Janet, that is the joy of rewriting that you never know when you will be utterly surprised. But that is the way of the creative process and one must value it as these incidents help us Polish better our work. You have the discipline and the motivation. I am sure you will rewrite and clean up, cutting and trimming, adding and streamlining the novel to its perfection. Keep at it diligence and perseverance wins the race all the time. Of course a bit of God’s grace and blessings help. Windy and cloudy today but still hot. What can one do? It is, after all, summertime. All the best to you Janet. And you’re right, I hated Miami’s weather.
An incredible woman with impressive credentials! She lived a full and productive life to 105. Thank you, Janet, for sharing this with us.
You’re welcome, Edward. Thank you for reading my blog!
You’re so welcome, Janet.
What an extraordinary woman and we could certainly all be better with Dr. Coopers in our education system and governments. Thanks Janet.
What a phenomenal woman. And I’m quite sure she’d shake her head to see how backwards things have gone. Thanks for introducing us to and shedding light on Dr. Anna Julia Cooper. 😋
Dr. Cooper, indeed should be honored for her impressive credentials. Imagine studying every subject in college. Thank you, Janet, for this informative historical lesson.
I’m glad you enjoyed learning about Dr. Cooper — as did I. It is such a shame that women’s accomplishments — and especially the accomplishments of women of color — have never been included in the history books. We are all lesser for it.
I agree, Sally. So many women and people of color have been omitted from our history books. Everyone in the U.S. should know Dr. Cooper’s name but, even as a North Carolinian, I had never heard of her. We have lost so much in our society by only recognizing the accomplishments of white men. Thank you for your comment.
Thank you, Debby. Can you imagine if she could come back to the U.S. today and see the state of things? I am blown away by her determination and persistence! She should have been in all the American History books!
Absolutely!