A smile of sweet understanding
fellow Negroes to forget about
politics and a college education and
to learn how to be better farmers
and artisans. Cooper also favored
industrial training; yet she found
herself far more closely aligned with
the black scholar and author
W .E .B . Du B o il who advocated
classical instruction for his race.
"T h e object was black su rvival,"
says Hutchinson, noting that Coop­
er and others felt that, without the
academic programs, there would be
little hope of getting black students
into college and ultimately the pro­
fessions. "These students, then,
would become the bootstraps by
which the entire race would be up­
lifted," Hutchinson concludes.
Cooper became principal o f M
Street in 1902, but by the 1904-05
term she was at odds with the white-
dominated board, which insisted on
the vocational approach, believing,
Hutchinson writes, that blacks were
"m entally in fe rio r" and that such
an approach was therefore "appro­
priate.” The angered board charged
that under Cooper’s direction
school standards had slipped and
that the faculty was neglecting stu­
dent discipline. A ll the while, how­
ever, M Street students for the first
time were being adm itted— many
with scholarships— to H arvard,
Brown and other Ivy League col­
leges.
In 1906, the board fired Cooper.
W riting o f her dismissal, she said:
"T he dominant forces of our coun­
try are not yet tolerant of the higher
steps for colored youth."
Cooper's background and princi­
ples also put her squarely in the mid­
dle o f the emerging black women's
club movement. The clubs grew
among women dissatisfied with
being case aside as "colored" units
of white clubs and angered by racial
intolerance throughout American
society, even among religious
groups. Cooper believed "the strug­
gle for human rights might be waged
more effectively with the perspective
and balance o f intelligent black
women," Hutchinson says. Always
one to back polemics with action,
Cooper became a delegate to the
First National Conference of Afro-
American Women in Boston in
1895.
A quarter century later. Cooper,
now in her 60s and back in the D.C.
school system, took time o ff from
teaching to continue her lifelong
quest for education, this time pursu­
ing a doctorate at the Sorbonne in
Paris. Ironically, the former slave
girl's dissertation, written in
French, explored the Gallic nation's
attitude toward slavery.
In 1930, when she was about 72.
Cooper at last retires, but soon she
was again involved in an effort to
broaden the educational horizons of
black people, now as president o f
Frelinghuysen University, a black
institution in the nation's capital.
The university, established to ed­
ucate poor, working class blacks
from the South, had no real campus
o f its own and met in homes and
other makeshift educational centers.
But the school's morale and very
life was threatened when the D .C .
Board of Education terminated its
right to confer degrees, thrusting
Cooper into yet another battle over
the issue of educational opportunity
for blacks. Rejecting the concept
that the school could effectively
continue as a non-degree-conferring
institution, she appealed for recon­
sideration, writing the superinten­
dent of schools: " I am unwilling to
preside at a farce.”
She lost the battle, and she suf­
fered another blow when her niece
and namesake, whom she had
hoped would carry on the vital
work, died in 1939.
Anna Cooper lived for another
quarter century, quietly but without
losing her life's philosophy. A few
years before she died in 1964, she
wrote how she wished to be remem­
bered:
No flowers pleas, just a smile of
sweet understanding
The knowing look that sees
beyond and says gently and
kindly
Somebody's teacher on Vacation
now— Resting for the Fall
Opening.
&
A Salute
ToB lack History
NATIONAL BUSINESS
LEAGUE
Founded in 1900 by Booker T. Washington
OREGON CHAPTER
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(503) 283-4006
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/V rn d rw f
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It i
Fir»
O B HILL
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FoumUd in 1900 by t n o i . r T. W athmiHof
K sfeu tw e S n reta ty
JAMES BERRY
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'•The nailon’* oldest economic development and trade
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Stewart worked as a pharmacist at a hospital until the end o f W orld War I.
A fter her marriage to a fellow pharmacist in 1920, they moved to Toledo,
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Page 4 Section III Portland Observer, February 23, 1983
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