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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 20, 1985)
Anna Julia Cooper: from slave to school principal, > by Johnnie Douthis Smithsonian News Service Il isn't what we say about our selves, i t ’s what our life stands for. — Anna J. Coopei Aug. 10. 1958 She was the first woman from the D istrict o f C olum bia to earn a doctorate from the Sorbonne. She was among the first black women to earn a bachelor's degree from an American college. And she became principal o f the first public high school for black people in the United Slates. Anna Julia Cooper, feminist, hu man rights advocate, educational re former and teacher, was born into slavery as Annie Haywood in Raleigh, N .C ., about 1858 (her exact birthdate is unknown). Hut Cooper's life represented far more than a resume o f achieve ments. It illustrated, concludes Louise Daniel Hutchinson, Cooper’s biographer and historian at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in W ash ington, D .C ., that significant ac complishments could be made by a black woman against seemingly in surmountable odds for blacks late in the 19th century. "W h e n we consider,” H utchin son writes, " th a t s h e ... began her life under the most adverse circum stances and at a time when the mental capacity o f blacks and women was questioned and dispar aged, her achievements take on greater significance.'' Cooper, indeed, has won a large place o f respect in American history for steadfastly refusing to bow to the prevailing view held in the late 1800s that black people should fore go higher education for work in the trades and fields— work, this think ing proceeded, that would help blacks better themselves and improve their relations with south ern whites embittered by post-Civil War Reconstruction politics. Fate gave Anna Cooper a very long life , one that for American blacks spanned a century of tumul tuous history— servitude, Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction and the brief hope o f fu ll citizenship, reaction, segregation and, at last, the slow movement toward real equality. Cooper died in the 1960s as the civil rights movement was coming to life; yet her life's work aided that cause. She also was well ahead o f her time in arguing for women's rights. The C iv il W ar was barely three years over when little Anna, encour aged by her self-sacrificing mother (whose child presumably was lathered by her master. Dr. Fabius J. Haywood Sr.), went o ff to school ai Raleigh's new St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Insti tute, established by the Episcopal C hurch to prepare black teachers to veloped between the young woman and her Creek studies teacher, min istry student Ccorge A .C . Cooper, and at the close o f the 1877 school year, they were married. " H e was probably just the kind o f balance wheel that this intense young wom an needed in her life ,” Hutchinson suggests. But the shared life and plans thev had made were not to be; George Cooper died two years later, on Sept. 27, 1879. Now 21 and a full-time teacher at S. Augustine's Cooper in 1881 looked toward the possibility o f higher education, applying to O h io ’s Oberlin College, among the first U .S. schools to admit blacks and, especially im portant to this woman, admired for its academic standards. W ith her characteristic directness and candor. Cooper wrote the school’s president asking to be accepted as a "fre e tu itio n " A slaveowner could be whipped or jailed if caught teaching his slaves to read and write. In some southern states, that slave could be killed. Those who knew how to read surreptitiously taught other slaves their skill. instruct black youth. Bright and precocious, Anna served as a tutor ■it the school, where she received a 'inall stipend to pay for board and tuition, but as she would later recall, "a fte r a while I had a great deal of lime on my hands. I had devoured what was put before me, and . was looking for more." In that quest, Anna developed a courageous side that would serve her well in her professional life. Cieneralions before it was in vogue, she fought against sexism at St. Au gustine's confronting the issue as she tried to enroll in a Creek class. Told the class was for males only, she fought back, won a victory— and a scat in class. Ironically, a close friendship de student. "Southern schools pay very m eanly," she declared, but " I ex pect to have money enough to keep me one or two years at college___ ” Managing, resourcefully, to com plete a classical curriculum at Ober lin in 1884, Cooper soon found another chance to take a stand against sexism. She had been prom ised a professorship by the president of St. Augustine’s but that commit ment was ignored by his successor, who instead offered Cooper the po sition o f "teacher in charge o f girls.” She refused, then headed for Wilberforce College, a black church school in Xenia, Ohio, to chair the science and modren language de partment*. Feminist, human right* advocate, educational reformer and teacher, Anna Julia Cooper (C. 1858-1964) led a remarkable life. Born into slavery, she wasamong the first black women to earn a bachelor's degree from an American college, letter, she earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1925, she wrote: "My one aim is and has always been, so far as I may, to hold a torch for the children of a group too long exploited and too frequently disparaged in its struggling for the light." Builder of First American Clock & Surveyor of Nation’s Capitol Benjamin Banneker The diversity of this person's genius is told in the titles dbove Benjamin Banneker — you would think would be a name known by school children and adults alike Vet who has ever heard of his achievements? Not only was he the first Black to engage in clock-making in the American colonies (his life spanned 75 yeats from 1731 to 1806) but he also was a noted astronomer, mathematician and linguist His mechanical inventiveness led him in 1761 to construct a wooden 'striking' clock It was the first clock made in America and was so accurate that it kept perfect time and struck each hour unfailingly for more than 20 years Vet Banneker performed an even more astounding feat for the young America he helped found HE LAID OUT THE ENURE SURVEY OF WASHINGTON. D C BY MEMORY Banneker was a surveyor on a six-person team that helped lay out the blueprint for the city When the chair of the committee. Major L’Enfant. abruptly resigned and returned to Paris with his plans, Banneker — using his precise memory — reproduced the plans in their entirety1 Tfektronix COMMITTED TO EXCELLENCE P a g e 8. Section II. Portland Observer. February 20. 1985 ■ ’ 't : .
