Born in 1858 in North Carolina to her enslaved mother, Hannah Stanley Haywood, and her white slaveholder, Anna Julia Cooper spent her lifetime of over a century redefining the limitations and opportunities for women of color in a society set up for their disempowerment and subjugation. A distinguished scholar and educator, Cooper saw the status and agency of black women as central to the equality and progress of the nation. She famously wrote in her 1892 book
A Voice from the South, “only the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” She fought tirelessly throughout her life to re-enter and uplift the voice of black women in pursuit of a more just society for every.
For Harriet: Black Women’s History “27 Black Women Activist Everyone Should Know”, Kimberly Foster
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“I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it there too that the colored woman of America has bade her characteristic history and there her destiny is evolving.–Ann J. Cooper”
