Childhood Anna "Annie" Julia Haywood was born enslaved in
Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1858. She and her mother, Hannah Stanley Haywood, were enslaved by George Washington Haywood, one of the sons of North Carolina's longest-serving state Treasurer
John Haywood, who helped found the
University of North Carolina. Either George, who enslaved her mother, or his brother, Dr. Fabius Haywood, who enslaved her older brothers, Rufus and Andrew, Cooper worked as a domestic servant in the Haywood home and had the two aforementioned older brothers. Andrew, enslaved by Fabius J. Haywood, later served in the
Spanish–American War. Rufus was also born enslaved and became the leader of the musical group ''Stanley's Band''.
Education 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, North Carolina, founded by
the local Episcopal diocese to train teachers to educate the formerly enslaved 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." Her husband's early death may have contributed to her ability to continue teaching; if she had stayed married, she might have been encouraged or required to withdraw from the university to become a housewife. Cooper developed a close friendship with Grimké, and later wrote a memoir about the
Grimké Family, titled "The Early Years in Washington: Reminiscences of Life with the Grimkés," which appeared in
Personal Recollections of the Grimké family and the Life and Writings of Charlotte Forten Grimké (privately published in 1951). She began as a tenured teacher, teaching Latin, math and science at
M Street High School, becoming principal in 1901 or 1902. She later became entangled in a controversy involving the differing attitudes about black education, as she advocated for a model of classical education espoused by
W. E. B. Du Bois, "designed to prepare eligible students for higher education and leadership", rather than the vocational program that was promoted by
Booker T. Washington. The book is widely viewed as one of the first articulations of black feminism 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. It was widely praised within the Black community and among intellectuals for its pioneering ideas on race, gender, and education.
Later years neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The home is located beside
Anna J. Cooper Circle. Cooper was an author, educator, and public speaker. In 1893, she delivered the opening address at the
World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago. She was one of five African-American women invited to speak at this event, along with:
Fannie Barrier Williams,
Sarah Jane Woodson Early,
Hallie Quinn Brown, and
Fanny Jackson Coppin. In a 1902 speech, she said: In 1914, at 56, Cooper began courses for her doctoral degree at
Columbia University. However, she was forced to interrupt her studies in 1915 when she adopted her late half-brother's five children upon their mother's death. Later, she transferred her credits to the
University of Paris, which did not accept her Columbia thesis, an edition of
Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne. Over a decade, she researched and composed her dissertation, completing her coursework in 1924. Cooper defended her thesis "The Attitude of France on the Question of Slavery Between 1789 and 1848" in 1925. Cooper's retirement from Washington Colored High School in 1930 was not the end of her political activism. The same year she retired, she accepted the position of president at
Frelinghuysen University, a school founded to provide classes for DC residents lacking access to higher education. Cooper worked for Frelinghuysen for twenty years, first as president and then as registrar, and left the school only a decade before she died in 1964 at the age of 105. At the age of 65, she became the fourth Black woman in American history to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree. Her work was eventually published in an anthology of medieval French literature and was requested for classes and the bookstore at Harvard.
Frelinghuysen University In 1929, Cooper was elected to succeed Jesse Lawson as president of Frelinghuysen University, a post she assumed in 1930. Under Cooper's leadership in the 1930s, Frelinghuysen University focused on increasing literacy among the African American working poor and providing liberal arts and vocational education for unskilled workers. After the university found servicing its mortgage prohibitive, she moved the institution to her own house. Cooper retired from her position as president in 1940, but she continued her involvement with the university, taking a position as its registrar. Scholars argue that Anna Julia Cooper's work has been overshadowed by more celebrated figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, even though her contributions often preceded or paralleled his ideas. For example, Cooper addressed concepts akin to “
double consciousness” and critiqued portrayals of Black Americans in literature well before Du Bois, who frequently referenced her ideas without providing proper attribution.
Death On February 27, 1964, Cooper died in
Washington, D.C., at the age of 105 from a heart attack. Her memorial was held in a chapel on the campus of
Saint Augustine's College, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her academic career began. She was buried alongside her husband at the
City Cemetery in Raleigh. ==Legacy==