William Wilson Cooke (1871–1949) was an American architect. He worked in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury and was the first African American man to be employed there. Cooke was the first African American to obtain an architect’s license in the state of Indiana in 1929. He designed many buildings for Claflin College, the Cookman Institute, and the United States Postal Service. Early in his career he worked as a school administrator. Early life and education William Wilson Cooke was born on December 27, 1871, in Greenville, South Carolina. His parents were Magdalena Walker and Wilson Cooke, a former slave, merchant and local politician. He had four siblings, all of whom attended Claflin College. His paternal grandfather was Vardry McBee, an influential entrepreneur, a white slave holder, and philanthropist of Greenville. Cooke attended school in Greenville until age 14, and then served as a carpenters apprentice from 1885 until 1888. Cooke attended Claflin College (now Claflin University) in Orangeburg from 1888 to 1893, where he studied architectural drawing and graduated with a college preparatory diploma in liberal arts. In 1900, he attended classes Boston School of Technology (now Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and architecture classes at Columbia University. He returned to Claflin College to receive a B.S. degree in technology in 1902. Career From 1894 to 1897, he served as superintendent of industrial arts at Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth (now Savannah State University). He then returned to Claflin College in order to serve as the superintendent of manual training and industrial arts, replacing Robert Charles Bates. He also took classes to receive a B.S. in technology. After completing school, Cooke was employed by the Freedmen’s Aid Society and Women’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as an architect from 1902 and 1907. In March 1907, he took a three-day federal civil service examination in Boston, Massachusetts, as the required workplace admission test at that time was not offered to African-Americans in Washington, D.C.. He passed the exams and was hired in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the United States Department of the Treasury. This made him the first African American man to be employed at that department. In 1909, he transferred departments to Field Operations, where he would supervise the construction of federal courthouses and post offices. He continued to work at the Office of the