Anna Julia Cooper was born August 10, 1858 in Raleigh, North Carolina to her enslaved mother Hannah Stanley and father George Washington Haywood, who was her white slave master.  She was the first child out of three children.  However, birth records for slaves were uncertain at this time.  The Civil War ended when Cooper was at the age of 6 or 7.  Cooper was accepted into Oberlin College where she learned she had an interest in science and math, which were both thought to be fields of study primarily for men.  She then went to be a student teacher at the Saint Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina.  In June of 1877, Cooper married George C. Cooper who was an Episcopal minister.  She had to quit teaching because of this marriage, and unfortunately her husband died only two years after the marriage.  Cooper continued teaching after her husband’s death and continued actively speaking for colored women’s rights.

Education
B.A. 1884 and M.A. 1888, Oberlin College
Guilde Internationale, Paris 1911-1913
Columbia University 1914-1917
Ph.D. Universite de Paris 1925

Religion
Episcopalion

Memberships
Black Women’s Clubs

Career
Student Teacher and Teacher at St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute
Teacher at Wilberforce University
Teacher at Washington High School, M Street High School, Dunbar High School
Taught Latin and Math and was also a Principal

Activist History
Spoke in front of World’s Congress of Represenative Women in Chicago in 1893
Arued that African Americans should receive equal access to American Institutes of higher learning

Publications
A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892)
L’Attitude de la France a l’Egard de l’Esclavage pendant la Revolution (1925)
Le Pelerinage de Charlemagne: Voyage a Jerusalem et a Constantinople (1925)
 
 

Works Cited

Biography Resource Center, Gale Group, Inc. 2001. http://www.africanpubs.com/Apps/bios/0040CooperAnna.asp

Biography Website: Cooper, Anna Julia.  http://www.webster.edu/woolflm/cooper.html