## 1. Situating Cooper: Context for Cooper's Two Best-Known Writings




Anna Julia Cooper's best-known written work, *A Voice from the
South by a Black Woman of the South*, was published in 1892. This collection of essays and
speeches, described by Mary Helen Washington as an "unparalleled
articulation of black feminist thought" and by Beverley
Guy-Sheftall as the first book length Black feminist text, emphasizes
the import of a woman's voice and her unique contributions while at
the same time highlighting the racialization of gender and the
sexualization of race. Cooper takes an intersectional approach to
examining the interlocking systems of race, gender, and class
oppression--explicitly articulating how Black women are
simultaneously impacted by racism (the race problem) and sexism (the
woman question) and yet she is either an unknown or unacknowledged (by
white women, white men, or Black men) factor in examining or
eliminating these systems of oppression. For these reasons, Cooper
argues, Black women have a unique epistemological standpoint from
which to observe society and its oppressive systems as well as a
unique ethical contribution to make in confronting and correcting
these oppressive systems. Other central themes in *Voice* include the importance of education and intellectual
development; the necessity of respecting difference and the special
contribution that each racial group makes for human progress; an
economic, materialist, and existential conceptualization of value or
worth; and a theory of truth. Thus, this seminal text has
philosophical import not only for feminist philosophy, standpoint
theory, and epistemology, but also for Critical Philosophy of Race and
African American philosophy.




Anna Julia Cooper's *Voice* was published less than 30
years after the 1865 13th Amendment to the Constitution
which declared: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction." Select major works that come before Cooper's *Voice* include *Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge* (1838); *Religious Experience and the Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel* (1849); *Narrative of SojournerTruth* (1850) and the "Ain't I a Woman" remarks
attributed to Sojourner Truth (from the 1851 Women's convention
 in Akron, OH[2]); *Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass* (1845) and Douglass's *My
Bondage and My Freedom* (1855); and Martin Delany's 
*The Origins of Races and Color* (1879).




Significantly, Cooper's *Voice* is published
*before* Booker T. Washington's famous "Atlanta
Address" (1895), his autobiographical works *The Story of My
Life and Work* (1896) and *Up From Slavery* (1901), as well
as Washington's historic two-volume *The Story of the
Negro* (1909). It is also published ahead of W.E.B. Du
Bois's well-known "The Conservation of Races" (1897)
speech, the publication of *The Souls of Black Folk* (composed
of essays and speeches written by Du Bois between 1897 and 1903), and
*Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil* (1920) which not only
borrows the language of Cooper's book title, but also relies on
Cooper's astute insights on race and gender. As Mary Helen
Washington and Joy James have noted, Du Bois quoted a passage from
Cooper's "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration
and Progress of a Race," in his essay "The Damnation of
Women" from *Darkwater*, however; he truncates
Cooper's full argument in his selective quotations and he fails
to acknowledge her as the source of the quote.




Cooper's scholarly contributions beyond *A Voice from the
South* include her translation of the classic French text *Le
Pelerinage de Charlemagne* in 1917 and, of course, her
dissertation--*L'attitude de la France a
l'egard l'esclavage pendant la revolution*
(later translated by Frances Richardson Keller *Slavery and the
French Revolutionists*) which she defended in Paris, France at the
 Sorbonne in
 1925.[3]
 Cooper
became the fourth African American woman in the US to earn a Ph.D. and
accomplishes this feat the same year as Alain Locke publishes two
seminal writings. Locke, having earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from
Harvard University in 1918, on the topic "The Problem of
Classification in Theory of Value" goes on to publish
"Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro" and then the book length
 version *The New Negro: An Interpretation* in
 1925.[4] 
 There are several newspaper
articles announcing Cooper's achievement, but the event itself,
and perhaps more importantly the scholarly contributions made by Cooper
in her thesis, seems to slip into oblivion. Cooper's
project examines the ways in which attitudes about race and the
institution of slavery in France and San Dominique impacted
conceptualizations of rights and freedom in the contexts of the French
and Haitian Revolutions (and the Age of Reason and Revolution more
generally). This work by Cooper is quite significant insofar as
the Haitian Revolution is too often overlooked in relation to the
American and French Revolutions, and furthermore, there was a United
States military occupation of Haiti at the time she wrote it
(1914-1935). Cooper's dissertation offers an insightful and
yet underappreciated analysis of the Haitian Revolution that could be
paired well with, for example, C.L.R. James's *The Black
Jacobins*.




In addition to these better-known major scholarly writings, Cooper
went on to write and publish other essays and critical commentaries
over several decades--including a memoir about earning her doctorate
from the Sorbonne titled *The Third Step* and a memoir about the
Grimke family titled *The Early Years in Washington:
Reminiscences of Life with the Grimkes* (both memoirs
published about the middle of the twentieth century). 
Intentionally placing Cooper's scholarship and activism front and
center in recognizing her philosophical import goes against
commentaries that cast aside Cooper's theoretical contributions
to focus almost exclusively on her biography and personal life. 
As Lewis Gordon has noted in *Existentia Africana: Understanding
Africana Existential Thought* (2000), too often we find a close
examination of the ideas and theories of Black intellectuals absent
because interpretations of their biographies and experiences have been
preferred focal points. Vivian M. May takes this a step further
in *Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical
Introduction* (2007) where she notes a disturbing tendency among
many writers to focus on Black women intellectuals' lives rather
than their theories. Consequently, Black women's arguments
and theoretical contributions have frequently been under-engaged or
even dismissed altogether because so much attention is concentrated on
their life stories. Indeed, the bulk of this encyclopedia entry
focuses on Cooper's scholarship, activism, and philosophical
contributions in order to resist this troubling trend. A brief
biographical and historical background is available at the end of this
entry to locate Cooper's theoretical work within a larger
socio-historical and biographical context.


## 2. Historical and Contemporary Reception of Cooper's Philosophy




Historically, Anna Julia Cooper was directly and indirectly engaged in
debates about ideas related to race, gender, progress, leadership,
education, justice, and rights in the late 19th and early
20th centuries with race men like Frederick Douglass,
Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker
T. Washington as well as activist women such as Maria W. Stewart,
Sojourner Truth, Frances Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church
Terrell. These debates transpired not only through speeches and
writings (including public essays and private letters), but also at
major meetings like the Hampton Conference (1892), the Chicago World's
Fair (1893), and the Pan African Conference (1900)--to give only
a few examples.




In the early African American philosophical canon,
activist-intellectuals like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington,
Alain Locke, and W.E.B. Du Bois tend to be the more readily recognized
philosophical figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in the United States than Anna Julia Cooper and other Black
women scholars and activists from this era who are largely overlooked.
The canonization of Black men of this period is evidenced by
book-length scholarly publications produced throughout the 1990s such
as Leonard Harris's *The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem
Renaissance and Beyond* (1991); Howard Brotz's *African
American Social and Political Thought, 1850-1920* (1992);
Howard McGary and Bill Lawson's *Between Slavery and Freedom:
Philosophy and American Slavery* (1993); and Howard McGary's
*Race and Social Justice* (1999). Certainly, the works of prominent
philosophers who write about this tradition have made it
possible even to describe an area of philosophy called "African
American Philosophy." Unfortunately these early contributions to
African American philosophical discourse frequently ignored the
philosophical contributions of African American women including
Cooper. Fortunately there is at least one exception to this exclusive
focus on men, specifically Joy James's *Transcending the Talented
Tenth* (1996) in which Anna Julia Cooper figures prominently
beside W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. James notes the ways
in which Cooper argued for a bottom up rather than a top down approach
to leadership and standard of measurement for liberation. Rather than
focusing on Black intellectual male elites, Cooper asserted that we
must pay attention to the conditions of working class and poor Black
women. This position offers an ethics of the oppressed consistent
with many Black feminist philosophies and also comparable with
Continental figures like Jean-Paul Sartre who makes similar claims
 decades 
 later.[5]




Attention to Cooper in the philosophical literature increases as we
move into the twenty-first century. For example, when it comes to
anthologizing Cooper's scholarship her writings have been
featured in over thirty anthologies, including philosophy anthologies
such as James A. Montmarquet and William H. Hardy's
*Reflections: An Anthology of African American Philosophy*
(2000); Leonard Harris, Scott L. Pratt, and Ann S. Waters's
*American Philosophies: An Anthology* (2001); and Tommy
Lott's *African American Philosophy: Selected Readings*
(2002). More recently, Cooper has earned an important place in
articles focusing specifically on African American women's
philosophical traditions in special issues of journals.
 *Hypatia*, *Special Issue on Women in the American
Philosophical Tradition*, Volume 19, Number 2, Spring 2004 (Edited
by Dorothy Rogers and Therese B. Dykeman) is one example. This
issue includes two articles on Cooper. The first by Cathryn
Bailey examines Cooper's philosophy of education (for Cooper,
liberal arts education provided the tools needed to live an examined
life worth living rather than only earning a living) along with
Cooper's constructions of Black womanhood against prevailing
notions that Black women were not true women. And the second
by Vivan M. May emphasizes Cooper's intersectional approaches to
liberation and the epistemological significance of Cooper writing
herself into typically exclusionary intellectual traditions.



*Philosophia Africana: Analysis of Philosophy and Issues in
African and the Black Diaspora*, *Special Issue: Anna Julia
Cooper*, Volume 12, Number 1, March 2009 (Edited by Kathryn T.
Gines and Ronald R. Sundstrom) is a special issue devoted entirely to
Cooper. The featured articles connect Cooper's feminist
philosophy with her social and political writings; virtue and care
ethics in Cooper's writings; romantic conceptions of human nature
and flourishing; Cooper's legacy as a public intellectual; and
her philosophy of social justice that informs her philosophy of
education. Likewise *African American Review: Special Section
on Anna Julia Cooper*, Volume 43, Number 2, Spring 2009 (Edited by
Shirley Moody-Turner) traces the trajectory of Cooper studies from *A
Voice from the South* and beyond. Articles here take up
Cooper's contributions to social theorizing and ethical social
relations, race and gender domination, critiques of racial
representation, social and economic oppression, radical approaches to
education, and community advocacy.




In addition to Gines, Sundstrom, and Bailey above, prominent
philosophers like Lewis Gordon have also highlighted Cooper's
philosophical import, including her contributions to existentialism,
Black feminist philosophy, and theories of worth, in two important
texts. In *Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana
Existential Thought* (2000) Gordon presents Cooper as a nineteenth
century figure exploring questions of problematic existence and
suffering within black intellectual existential productions. 
Cooper engaged ontological questions of being--from liberation
and humanization to revolution and freedom. With this in mind,
Gordon examines the existential dimensions of Cooper's *A
Voice from the South*, placing it beside texts like W.E.B. Du
Bois's *Souls of Black Folk*, Ralph Ellison's
*Going into the Territory*, Frantz Fanon's *Black Skin,
White Masks*, and Toni Morrison's *Playing in the
Dark*.




In *An Introduction to Africana Philosophy*--*Cambridge
Introductions to Philosophy* (2008), Gordon asserts that Cooper,
"is without question the most sophisticated thinker on what is
known today as black feminist thought from the late nineteenth century
into the early twentieth century" (Gordon 2008, 71). More
specifically, Gordon explains how Cooper's *A Voice from the
South* "articulated the argument that continues to resonate
in black feminist thought, namely, that black women must become agents
of their own future, and that much of the health of their community
rests on their shoulders because of the burdens they are forced to
carry. This argument is advanced through her theory of worth, which
she issues in response to racist arguments against the value of black
people." Cooper's theory of worth, described by Gordon as
"an efficiency theory of worth" is especially evident in
her essay "What Are We Worth?" (Gordon 2008, 71). Gordon
places Cooper's philosophical insights here in conversation with
Marx ("Cooper, like Marx, was in fact working with a model of
alienation that did not require the category of oppression, although
subjugation and correlates with slavery were hallmarks of their
thought") and Nietzsche (both explored the relationship between
worth and health--those benefiting from absence of adversity are
less healthy than those facing and overcoming adversity).




There is not yet a book length analysis written by a philosopher
that focuses on Cooper's philosophical import and contributions,
however; one could certainly argue that Vivian M. May's *Anna
Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction*
(2007) offers the most comprehensive analysis of Cooper's
writings to date. Going against critical readings and
(mis)interpretations of Cooper as an elitist who subscribed to Western
ethnocentrism and Victorian constructions of the "Cult of True
Womanhood," May challenges Cooper's readers and critics to
engage in a more nuanced analysis of her writings and activism.
For example, May emphasizes Cooper's activism (which is often
marginalized and/or erased altogether in the secondary literature) in a
way that demonstrates how Cooper's lived experience and
scholarship were quite anti-elitist. According to May,
"Perhaps, then, the challenge lies in developing flexible
interpretative strategies able to attend to Cooper's different
vocal registers or resonances without silencing them, and more
expansive notions of political action or of counter-publics able to
recognize a broader range of activities as, in fact, activist"
(50). Additionally, in response to Stephanie Athey's
framing of Cooper as problematically relying on eugenic language and
ideology, May presents a counter-argument reading Cooper as
contributing to an early materialist Black feminist analysis of Black
women's oppression (55). Contra claims that Cooper sought
to imitate whiteness or Western ethnocentrism and Eurocentrism, May
underscores Cooper's contention that "imitation is the
worst of suicide" and adds, "Cooper argued that what
African Americans needed most was 'deliverance' from
normative whiteness" (61). May also emphatically rejects
dismissals of Cooper as a woman invested in the oppressive
*habitus* of "True Womanhood," offering an alternate
reading of Cooper as one who manipulates and strategically redeploys,
rather than fully accepts or embraces, the tenets of True
Womanhood.


## 3. Recognizing Cooper's *Voice*: A Woman Question and a Race Problem




The historical neglect of Cooper's scholarship by philosophers
requires an extensive overview of Cooper's scholarly
writings. This section reintroduces *A Voice from the
South* in order to advance Cooper's place, not only in
African American philosophy and Critical Philosophy of Race, but also
in Feminist and Social and Political Philosophy. *Voice*
is organized into two parts. The first part, "The Colored
Woman's Office", includes: "Our Raison
d'Etre" (1892); "Womanhood: A Vital Element in
the Regeneration and Progress of a Race" (1892); "The
Higher Education of Women" (1890-1891); "Woman Versus the
Indian" (1891-1892); and "The Status of Women in
America"(1892). The second part, "Race and
Culture" features: "Has America a Race Problem: If So, How
Can it Best Be Solved?" (1892); "The Negro as Presented in
American Literature" (1892); "What Are We Worth?"
(1892); and "The Gain from a Belief" (1892). In this
collection of essays, several of which were originally delivered as
public speeches, Cooper argues that woman's experience in general
and Black woman's experience in particular, places her in a
unique position to have a distinctive voice, influence, and
contribution to make to her race, to the nation, and to the world more
broadly.


### "Our Raison d'Etre"




In the short but powerful opening statement of *A Voice from the
South*, "Our Raison d'Etre" (1892) Cooper
explains that while the voice of the Negro (man) of the South has been
but a muffled chord, "the one mute and voiceless note has been
the sadly expectant Black woman..." (cited in *The Voice of
Anna Julia Cooper*, hereafter VAJC, p. 51). Using the analogy of a
courtroom trial, Cooper explains that the plaintiff's and
defendant's attorneys:



>  
> 
> ...have analyzed and dissected, theorized and
> synthesized with sublime ignorance or pathetic misapprehension of
> counsel from the black client. One important witness has not yet been
> heard from. The summing up of evidence deposed, and the charge to the
> jury have been made--but no word from the Black Woman. 
> (VAJC, 51)
> 


 

Cooper underscores how the Black [male] client, the muffled voice,
has at least been consulted, even if only with "ignorance"
and "misapprehension." But the "one important
witness," i.e. the Black woman, has been rendered mute and
voiceless. Cooper asserts that the white man cannot speak to Black
men's experiences and furthermore, that Black men cannot speak to
Black women's experiences. She elaborates on this position in
"Womanhood, A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of
a Race."


### "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race"




In "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and
Progress of a Race" (1886) Cooper astutely addresses intersecting
issues of race, gender, and society--including intra-group
racial politics, intra-group gender politics, and the professed ideals
of American society. Her observations speak directly to debates
in early African American philosophy and political thought around
leadership, representation, and competing philosophies of race (for
example between Frederick Douglass's assimilationism and Martin
Delany's separatism). Concerning intra-group racial
politics, Cooper asserts: "The Late Martin Delany, who was an
unadulterated black man, used to say when honors fell upon him, that
when he entered the council of kings the black race entered with him;
meaning, I suppose, that there was no discounting his race identity and
attributing his achievements to some admixture of Saxon blood"
(VAJC 63). As a Black woman whose father is thought to have been
her mother's white master, Cooper pushes back on two fronts.
 Not only can Delany not represent the whole simply by virtue of
his "pure" Black blood (unmixed with Saxon blood), but also
because "no man can represent the race" (VAJC 63). It
is in this context that Cooper made the now famous declaration that
"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*" (VAJC, 63). Here she
problematizes intra-group race and gender politics (specifically Black
male patriarchy) by insisting on the significance of the BLACK WOMAN in
general and laying claim to her particular significance as a Black
woman to the progress of the race--this despite the admixture of Saxon
blood, which in her case had been violently imposed by the legacy of
slavery and the systematic sexual exploitation of Black women.




This analysis also provides a different background against which we
can read Cooper's description of the "colored girls"
of the South as: "that large, bright, fatally beautiful class
that stand shivering like delicate plantlets before the fury of
tempestuous elements, so full of promise, yet so sure of destruction;
often without a father to whom they dare apply the loving term, often
without a stronger brother to espouse their cause and defend their
honor..." (VAJC 60). This passage not only underscores the
danger that Black girls and women faced in terms of sexual
exploitation it also challenges some claims made by Alexander Crummell
in a speech given three years earlier titled "The Black Woman of
the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs" (1883). Crummell makes a
clear distinction between the *colored people* (whom he
describes as those who were more educated and had better material
conditions) and the *negro population* (whom he describes as
intellectual starvelings). Crummell attributes the affluence of
colored people to "the kindness and generosity of their white
kindred--white fathers and relatives (1883, 212). Cooper is
making the case that "colored" people don't always
have a "father to whom they dare apply the loving term" or
the kindness and generosity that having white kindred in selective
instances might have entailed. She also makes many references to the
ways in which white men protected "English womanhood" and
the perceived lack of protection of Black women by Black men. When
Cooper asserts that snares and traps are set for the
"unprotected, untrained colored girl of the South," this
is a reference to the sexual exploitation of Black girls and
women (VAJC, 64).




Cooper emphasizes the honor of Black women, the idea that they
should occupy the role of mother or a family role ("Woman,
Mother,--your responsibility is one that might make the angels
tremble...The training of children..." [VAJC, 59]), and
their responsibility for the moral education of Black youth and the
regeneration of the race ("...the regeneration...the
retraining of the race...must be the black woman" [VAJC,
62]). On this basis, some have argued that Cooper upholds American
ideals of womanhood and attempts to assimilate Black women to the
characteristics often assigned to their white female
counterparts. Other examples of these ideals include
Cooper's claim that "the hope of our
country...rests...on the home life and the influence of good
women in those homes" (VAJC, 55). And furthermore, that the
responsibility of woman and mother is to train children (VAJC,
55). Cooper asserts: "...the position of woman in
society determines the vital elements of its regeneration and
progress. Now that this is so on *a priori* grounds all
must admit. And this is not because woman is better or stronger
or wiser than man, but...because it is she who must first form the
man by directing the earliest impulses of his character" (VAJC
59). These ideas about women's role in society,
and/or civilization are comparable to those expressed by Thomas
Babington Macaulay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Martin Delany. 




Macaulay states, "'You may judge a nation's rank
in the scale of civilization from the way they treat their
women'" (VAJC, 55). Likewise Ralph Waldo Emerson
claims in "American Civilization":



> 
> 
> Right position of woman in the State is another index [of
> civilization]. Poverty and industry with a healthy mind read very
> easily the laws of humanity, and love them: places the sexes in right
> relations of mutual respect, and a severe morality gives that
> essential charm to woman which educates all that is delicate, poetic,
> and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and learning, conversation and
> wit, in her rough mate; so that I have thought it a sufficient
> definition of civilization to say, it is the influence of
> good women. (Emerson 1862)
> 




And in *The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the
Colored People of the United States*, Martin Delany declares,
"No people are ever elevated above the condition of their
*females*; hence, the condition of the *mother*
determines the condition of the child. To know the position of a
people, it is only necessary to know the *condition* of their
*females*; and despite themselves, they cannot rise above
their level" (Delany 1862, Chapter 24, Delany's 
emphasis).[6]




In addition to questions about gender, Cooper also interrogates ideals
about civilization and society. Some take Cooper's representation of
American society as an exemplar to be problematic,
especially when she looks down on other societies to
justify this idealized standard. For example, she disparages the lifestyles
of those in Turkey describing them as "the vilest of the vile,
unprogressive, unambitious, and inconceivably low...[Turkey is an]
effete and immobile civilization" (VAJC, 54). At times she
glorifies American society and contrasts it with others. America
is described as fresh, vigorous, progressive, elevating and inspiring,
"the European bud and the American flower of civilization"
(VAJC, 54). She acknowledges we have not yet reached our ideal
American civilization, but assures her audience that "America is the
arena in which the next triumph of civilization is to be won"
(VAJC, 54). Cooper, however, does not completely romanticize the
American experience. Although she describes America as the
"flower of modern civilization" she quickly notes that
every person in America is not able to fully experience this
"floral" aspect of American life. Cooper is very aware
that the Black experience in America is quite contrary to that of their
white counterparts. But she is hopeful, perhaps over-optimistic,
about improving the status and experience of Blacks in America,
stating, "our satisfaction in American institutions rests not in
the fruition we now enjoy, but it springs rather from the possibilities
and promise that are inherent in the system, though as yet, perhaps,
far in the future" (VAJC, 54). Some might read this as
Cooper's attempt to hold America up to its professed ideals.


### "The Higher Education of Women"


 

In the essay "The Higher Education of Women"
(1890-1891) Cooper provides a feminist argument for educating
women. She examines the sentiments against the education of women
in the early 1800s and provides a counter argument by referencing the
positive impact that education has had in the lives of women who were
able to attend colleges and pursue B. A. degrees as well as the
positive impact on the world more broadly. According to Cooper, higher
education among women "...has given symmetry and
completeness to the world's agencies" (VAJC, 76). Thus, one of
the objectives of giving women access to higher education is to better
equip them to influence humanity and to contribute to the questions,
problems and debates on the world stage. Cooper argues, "the
feminine factor can have its proper effect only through women's
development and education so that she may fitly and intelligently
stamp her force on the forces of her day..." (VAJC,
78).



Cooper not only discusses the education of women in general, she
is also acutely aware of the importance of education in the lives of
Black women and girls in particular. We are again reminded of the double
damnation of Black women, here in the area of education. While
there were constraints on educational opportunities for
Black people more generally, she brings attention to an attitude of
resistance from Black men concerning academic development among
women. Cooper admits, "It seems hardly a gracious thing to
say, but it strikes me as true, that while our men seem thoroughly
abreast of the times in almost every other subject, when they strike
the woman question they drop back into sixteenth century logic"
(VAJC, 85). She notes that while Black men were aware of
issues such as racial uplift, they largely ignored the problems
specific to (Black) women, i.e. the other "half" of the
race that they were supposedly uplifting. This antiquated
attitude is not limited to the higher education of adult women, but
also applied to young girls. Cooper exclaims, "[G]ive
the girls a chance!... Let our girls feel that we expect more from
them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in
society. Teach them that there is a race with special needs which
they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking
for their trained, efficient forces" (VAJC, 86-87).




In "The Higher Education of Women" we see Cooper's
commitment to the idea that women (and girls) have a voice that must be
heard, they have an influence and contribution that must be made to the
race and to all of humanity. The attainment of higher education
by women has produced well-equipped and thoughtful women "whom
the world has long awaited for in pain and anguish till there should be
added...the complement of that masculine influence which has
dominated it for fourteen centuries" (VAJC, 73). Cooper expounds
on her theories about the unique mission and influence of women, namely
"to put in the tender and sympathetic cord in nature's
grand symphony, and counteract, or better, harmonize the diapason of
mere strength and might" (VAJC, 75). Cooper acknowledges
that with the (negative) influence of men, some women may strike a
"false note" or parrot "cold 
conceits"--however, Cooper insists that "her 
heart is aglow with sympathy
and loving kindness, and she cannot be true to her real self without
giving out these elements into the forces of the world" (VAJC,
75).


### "Woman Versus the Indian"




In "Woman Versus the Indian" Cooper situates her
philosophy of rights intersectionally--calling for the natural
inherent rights of all people, or "the rights of humanity"
but also specifying groups typically denied these rights such as
Blacks, women, Indians (or Native Americans), and the poor. Just as
she is critical of Black men for their sexism, Cooper is equally
critical of white women's racism, particularly the racism expressed by
white women's organizations that claimed to be tackling the oppression
of *all* women. She challenges the tendency in the (white)
woman's movement to fight for (white) women's rights at the expense
of, or instead of, others' rights. Taking a strong stand against all
forms of oppression in "Woman Versus the Indian"
(1891-1892) she declares:



> 
> 
> Woman should not even by inference, or for the sake of argument,
> seem to disparage what is weak. For woman's cause is the
> cause of the weak; and when all the weak shall have received their due
> consideration, then woman will have her 'rights,' and the
> Indian will have his rights, and the Negro will have his rights, and
> all the strong will have learned at last to deal justly, to love mercy,
> and to walk humbly .... (VAJC, 105)
> 




In this essay, Cooper is responding in part to an essay by Ann Shaw
with the same title. Shaw's essay, as the title suggests,
places the issue of women's rights against the rights of American
Indians. It is noteworthy that Cooper rejects exclusionary
reasoning (by inference or by argument) stating, "All prejudices,
whether of race, sect, or sex, class pride, and caste distinctions are
the belittling inheritance and badge of snobs and prigs" (VAJC,
105). Cooper's disdain for such thinking is thoroughly
communicated. She adds, "The philosophic mind sees that its
own 'rights' are the rights of humanity" (VAJC, 105).
Cooper is denouncing oppression against all persons, "The
white woman does not need to sue the Indian, or the Negro, or any other
race or class who have been crushed under the iron heel of Anglo Saxon
power and selfishness" (VAJC, 108).




For Cooper, it is necessary to reject and speak out against all
forms of oppression. She petitions:



>  
> 
> It is not the intelligent woman versus the ignorant
> woman; nor the white woman versus the black, the brown, and the
> red--it is not even the cause of woman versus
> man...[W]oman's strongest vindication for speaking is that the
> world needs to hear her voice...when race, color, sex, condition,
> are realized to be accidents, not the substance of life...then
> woman's lesson is taught and woman's lesson is won--not the white
> woman not the black woman nor the red woman, but the cause of every
> man or woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong. (VAJC,
> 108)
> 




She pleads the cause of every man and woman who is wronged,
rejecting oppression against the ignorant, various races, and
women.


### "The Status of Woman in America"




In "The Status of Woman in America" (1892), Cooper
demonstrates continued awareness of issues facing Black women in
America and she advocates their political involvement and
empowerment. Cooper discusses the U.S. economy and the condition
of women during the woman's era of the late nineteenth century,
(VAJC,
 11).[7] 
She brings
to the forefront the dilemma of the Black woman, the fact that
"She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem
and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both" (VAJC,
112).


 

Cooper emphasizes the dedication of educated and uneducated Black
women to the survival of the race. Both have demonstrated their
commitment to the race in concrete ways, for example, by leaving their
husbands for committing "race disloyalty" in their voting
choices during Reconstruction (VAJC, 133 and 115). She states,
"It is notorious that ignorant black women in the South have
actually left their husband's homes...for what was understood by
the wife to be race disloyalty, or 'voting away' as she
expresses it, the privileges of herself and her little ones"
(VAJC, 115). Cooper makes many references here to Black men, the role
they played in politics, and how they were "absorbed in the
immediate needs of their own political interests" (VAJC,
113). She also mentions the perception that the "Democratic
Negro is a traitor and a time server" (VAJC, 115). She adds,
"...there are not many men...who would dare face a
wife quivering in every fiber with the consciousness that her husband
is a coward who could be paid to desert her deepest and dearest
interests" (VAJC, 115).


 

In this essay, Cooper makes no attempt to gloss over the sexist
challenges faced by Black women. She states that Black women are
"hampered and shamed by a less liberal sentiment and a more
conservative attitude on the part of those for whose opinion she cares
most [i.e. Black men]" (VAJC, 113). She adds, "As far as
my experience goes the average man of our race is less frequently
ready to admit the actual need among the sturdier forces of the world
for women's help or influence" (VAJC, 113). Cooper asserts that
women have significant contributions to make to social, economic, and
national issues ("Great social and economic questions await her
influence" [VAJC, 113]). They can shed light on the
management of school systems, public institutions, prison systems, and
mental institutions (VAJC, 113). Cooper understood that the status of
women and their role in the progress of the race was changing. She
recalls that fifty years before her time a woman's activity was
limited to "a clearly cut 'sphere', including
primarily the kitchen and the nursery... [But] the woman of today
finds herself in the presence of responsibilities which ramify through
the profoundest and most varied interests of her country and
race" (VAJC, 116).




This can be read in contrast to some of the gender roles that Cooper
outlined in the "Womanhood" essay. In the
"Status" essay we see Cooper take up a stronger more
encompassing notion of Black female agency that more readily embraces
new opportunities and possibilities for Black women outside of the
domestic sphere. She is speaking here of the vital roles that
women must play outside of the home in order to see progress for the
Black race. What she has in mind here goes beyond the traditional
standards of white womanhood. 


### "Has America a Race Problem? If So, How Can it Best Be Solved?"




In "Has America a Race Problem? If So, How Can it Best
Be Solved?" (1892) Cooper argues that progressive peace is
achieved through fair conflict and difference, anticipating later work
by Audre Lorde. According to Cooper, "All through
God's universe we see eternal harmony and symmetry as the
unvarying result of the equilibrium of opposing forces" (VAJC,
121). Operating at the forefront of this analysis is racial conflict. What Cooper has in mind is not the obliteration
of one race by another, but the progress that is achievable when we
embrace difference and change. Cooper endorses multiculturalism
and racial diversity for the purpose of progress and argues that
isolation hinders the development of racial groups rather
than making them stronger. Here Cooper is responding to various
positions about interactions, or even admixture, between races. 
Like Crummell before her and Du Bois after her, Cooper was convinced
that every race had a particular purpose and message to contribute
toward human progress. Du Bois has been credited with
making this claim in "Conservation of Races" from
*The Souls of Black Folk*, but this idea had been prevalent for
years before the 1897 "Conservation of Races" speech.




Robert Bernasconi has traced this idea back to the philosophy of
Johann Gottfried von Herder who wrote *Ideas on the Philosophy of
the History of Humankind* (1784). Herder (against Immanuel Kant)
actually "rejected the division of humanity into races and
insisted that a division into peoples is more appropriate"
(Bernasconi 2000, 23). Herder argued that each group of peoples has a
unique and important contribution to make to civilization. Going
against prevailing 18th century ideas about civilization
and race, Herder asserted that the Negro is a human and not an
animal. He adds, "You should not oppress him, nor murder him,
nor steal from him: for he is a human being just as you
are..." (Bernasconi 2000, 26).




This provides greater insight into not only Du Bois's claim that
"manifestly some of the great races of today--particularly
the Negro race--have not as yet given to civilization the full
spiritual message which they are capable of giving (Du Bois 1897,
quoted from Du Bois 1903, 26), but also Cooper's claim (five years
before Du Bois) that "Each race has its badge, its exponent, its
message, branded in its forehead by the great Master's hand
which is its own peculiar keynote, and its contribution to the harmony
of the nations" (VAJC, 122). For Cooper, the delivery of each
message requires contact and conflict, but
*not* brutal repression and racial domination. Cooper is
clear that prejudice and race domination only leads to immobility and
death. Implicit in her argument is a rejection of the complete
assimilation (or even amalgamation) of one race into another. (This is also a theme that is taken up later by Du Bois.) 
Cooper constantly reiterates the point that race differences are
intended to encourage races to sharpen or improve one another through
equilibrium, conflict, and harmony, not through domination and
hierarchy, or even assimilation. We see the significance of God
even in Cooper's philosophy of history as it relates to conflict
and progress when she explains, "the God of battles is in the
conflicts of history. The evolution of civilization is in His
care, eternal progress His delight" (VAJC, 129).


### "The Negro As Presented in American Literature"




In "The Negro As Presented in American Literature"
(1892) Cooper shows that standpoint theory does not have to devolve
into unending relativism when we take into account the possibility of
an inauthentic standpoint. She expresses her outrage at
pseudo-intellectuals who disingenuously take up the "Negro
question" to analyze race, bringing with them their prejudices,
antipathies, and a rejection of any candid and careful study. She
explains that with "flippant indifference" many
"aspire to enlighten the world with dissertations on the racial
traits of the Negro" (VAJC, 140). This is the case, not only for
dissertations on race, but also for art and literature that seeks to
portray a distorted image of the Negro. Cooper asserts, "it is an insult
to humanity and a sin against God to publish any such sweeping
generalizations of a race on such meager and superficial
information. We meet at every turn--this obtrusive and
offensive vulgarity, this gratuitous sizing up of the Negro and
conclusively writing down his equation, sometimes even among his ardent
friends and bravest defenders" (VAJC, 147).




Cooper calls into question the standpoint from which such
dissertations are written and argues that the Negro has the right to
identify the shortcomings of such analyses. The issues raised by
Cooper here concern not only the standpoint from which these materials
are produced, but also the inauthenticity of the product itself. This
inauthenticity leads to a mass production of images that
"portray colored persons only as bootblacks and hotel waiters,
grinning from ear to ear and bowing and curtseying for the extra
tips" (VAJC, 149). As a result of this false yet dominating
image, many have not seen, "and therefore cannot be convinced
that there exists a quiet, self-respecting, dignified class,
...of cultivated tastes and habits..." among Negroes,
(VAJC, 149). Even more impressive than Cooper's ability to advance
issues of standpoint theory and authenticity, is her insight about the
producers of these controlling negative images. Cooper asserts that
rather than producing an accurate picture of the Black man, these
portraits only reveal the consciousness (or subconsciousness) of the
white man producing the images. According to Cooper, the authentic
image of the Negro has not yet been produced. She assets, "an
authentic portrait, at once aesthetic and true to life, presenting the
Black man as a free American citizen, not just the humble slave of
*Uncle Tom's Cabin*--but the *man*, divinely
struggling and aspiring yet tragically warped and distorted by the
adverse winds of circumstance, has not yet been painted...that
canvass awaits the brush of the colored man himself" (VAJC,
158).


### "What Are We Worth?"




In "What Are We Worth?" Cooper provides a theoretical
rendering of race prejudice, grounding it in sentiment and/or
ideas. Cooper's starting point for these reflections is a
quote from Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe) in
which he asks, if Africa and Africans where to sink into the ocean
"how much poorer would the world be?" and then posits that
in the end "not a poem, not an invention, not a piece of art
would be missed from the world"--suggesting that none of
the above have been contributed to the world by Africa or
Africans. From this starting point Cooper goes on to describe
sentiment as "ephemeral", "shifting", and
"unreliable", and furthermore that "color
prejudice or race prejudice is mere sentiment governed by the
association of ideas" (VAJC, 162). Cooper surmises that when she
hears expressions of dislike of the Negro for being "weak"
such sentiments are an example of narrow-mindedness that is not worth
engaging. She states, "Now this dislike it is useless to
inveigh against and folly to rail at" (VAJC, 162).




Presenting race prejudice as sentiment governed by the association
of ideas, Cooper explains that it is "impervious to reason"
and "cannot be annihilated by rhetoric" (VAJC, 163). 
Thus, rather than approach the question of the worth of Africans from the standpoint of sentiment, Cooper raises the
existential and phenomenological question of the value of human
persons, particularly persons of African descent in the American
context. She then shifts her analysis of worth to market value,
examining the notion of worth as determined by the value of material,
labor, and in the case of persons, the vital importance of education
("Education, then, is the safest and richest investment possible
to man" [VAJC, 168]).




Cooper offers an array of statistics on Black schools (including
early childhood developments, colleges, and universities), teachers,
ministers, and other professionals (e.g. doctors and lawyers) to make
the case for the "unassisted effort of the colored people for
self-development" (VAJC, 169). She also provides
statistics on the high mortality rates, the economic disempowerment of
share cropping systems, and the limited housing opportunities among
Black Americans. Cooper describes the white labor unions of the
North as tyrannical insofar as their working conditions are far more
preferable to those of Black men working for fifty cents per day in the
fields and "the pinched and down-trodden colored women bending
over wash-tubs and ironing boards--with children to feed and
house rent to pay, wood to buy, soap and starch to 
furnish--lugging home weekly great baskets of clothes for 
families who pay them
for a month's laundrying barely enough to purchase a substantial
pair of shoes" (VAJC, 173). Cooper critiques labor unions when she describes
"foreigners" and "immigrant laborers, who cannot even
speak English" threatening to "cut off the nerve and
paralyze the progress of an industry that gives work to an
American-born citizen" (VAJC, 173-174).




Returning to the education question, Cooper is clear that she
supports both classical education and trade education based on what is
most appropriate for the individual student. On the one hand, she notes, "I
want nothing I may say to be construed into an attack on classical
training or on art development and culture. I believe in allowing
every longing of the human soul to attain its utmost reach"
(VAJC, 175). On the other hand, she is clear that, "The
power of appreciation is the measure of an individual's
aptitudes; and if a boy hates Greek and Latin and spends all his time
whittling out steamboats, it is rather foolish to try to force him into
the classics" (VAJC, 175).




As if rebutting the opening suggestion by Beecher that Africans have
not contributed poetry, inventions, or art--Cooper highlights
the poetic contributions of Phillis Wheatley, the inventions of
successful Black farmers, the heroism of Black soldiers, and the
artistic work of sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis. Coming full circle
back to her description of race prejudice as sentiment Cooper
concludes: "Short sighted idiosyncrasies are but transient
phenomena. It is futile to combat them, and unphilosophical to be
depressed by them...Our only care need be the intrinsic worth of
our contributions...and if we contribute a positive value in those
things the world prizes, no amount of negrophobia can ultimately
prevent its recognition" (VAJC, 187).


### "The Gain from a Belief"




In "The Gain from a Belief" Cooper takes on English and
French progressivism and positivism of the 19th century
(Mill, Comte, and others) using these figures' organic metaphors
and visions of cultural development to explore the debates about racial
uplift, the so-called Negro problem, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and
universal brotherhood. She presents the reader with a
philosophical antagonist--a solitary figure with a cold,
intellectual eye, pallid check, and harrowed brow. He represents

"Speculative unbelief, curiously and sneeringly watching the

humdrum, common-place, bread-and-butter toil of unspeculative
belief" (VAJC, 188). This thinker--with his
speculative unbelief, skepticism, positivism, and agnosticism, is
juxtaposed with "struggling, working, believing humanity"
that holds unscientific faith. Confronting the imagined
philosophical figure Cooper states, "Sir...Your philosophy,
I presume, lifts you above the toils and anxieties, the ambitions and
aspirations of the common herd. Pardon me, but do you not feel
called to devote those superior powers of yours to the uplifting of
your less favored brotheren?" (VAJC, 188).




Cooper goes on to describe various philosophical positions
concerning positivism, agnosticism, and skepticism looking at the works
of Pascal, Ritcher, Hume, Comte, Huxley, Mill, Spencer, Lewes, and
Ingersoll. Against these philosophies, Cooper makes the case for
the import of heroism, devotion, and sacrifice inspired by feeling,
faith, and belief. She clarifies her position of faith noting,
"I do not mean by faith the holding of correct views and
unimpeachable opinions on mooted questions; nor to I understand it to
be the ability to forge cast-iron formulas and dub them TRUTH...To
me, faith means *treating the truth as true*" (VAJC,
193). These points are directed toward the possibilities and
various beliefs concerning racial uplift. 




Cooper asserts, "Life must be more than dilettante
speculation" (VAJC, 194). Rather than talking as a
spectator, you ought to lead, finance, and live what you believe. 
Taking up some of the racial debates of that time, Cooper argues that
one's actions should follow from one's beliefs. If
you believe that "...the Negro race in America has a
veritable destiny in His [God's] eternal purposes"...
then time should not be wasted on "discussing the 'Negro
Problem' amid the clouds of your fine Havana, ensconced in your
friend's well-cushioned arm-chair and with your patent leather
boot-tips elevated to the opposite mantle" (VAJC, 194).
If you believe that "God hath made one blood of all
nations of the earth; and that interests which specialize and contract
broad, liberal, cosmopolitan idea of universal brotherhood and equality
are narrow and pernicious, then treat that truth as true" (VAJC,
194). Cooper asks philosophers and thinkers to be consistent in
applying their positions and expressing their beliefs. She
advises, "Don't inveigh against lines of longitude drawn by
others when at the same time you are applying your genius to devising
lines of latitude which are neither race lines, nor character lines,
nor intelligence lines--but certain social-appearance circlets
assorting your 'universal brotherhood' by shapes of noses
and texture of hair" (VAJC, 194). Cooper continues,
"If you object to imaginary lines--don't
draw them! Leave only the real lines of nature and
character" (VAJC, 195). She concludes by returning to the
import of the power of belief, "If thou believest, all things are
possible; and *as* thou believest, so be it to thee"
(VAJC, 196).


## 4. Cooper's Doctoral Thesis: *L'attitude de la France a l'egard de l'esclavage pendant la revolution*




Cooper's dissertation provides insights and analyses pertinent
to social and political philosophy, critical philosophy of race, as
well as critical interpretations of French Enlightenment. Like
*Voice*, this text by Cooper warrants an extensive overview
because it has remained almost wholly overlooked by philosophers. In
*L'attitude de la France a l'egard de
l'esclavage pendant la revolution*, Cooper succeeds in
resituating racial oppression, colonialism, and slavery as issues
central to rather than tangential to the French and Haitian
Revolutions. Her topic was motivated by several observations
including comments from French President Poincare--which to her
seemed significant to France's attitude about racial equality, as
well as the erection of a monument in Dakar, "A la Gloire de l
Armee Noirse" (VAJC, 324). Additionally, Cooper was
researching "the Franco Japanese Treaty of 1896--The
Naturalization of France: a) for Japanese, b) Hindus, c) Negroes, and
of course the discussions of the National Assemblies during the French
Revolution; the writings and speeches of and about La
Societe des Amis des Noir--l'Abbe Gregoire
and others" (VAJC, 324).




To these interests and influences, Cooper adds her avid reading of
*Le Monde Noir* (or *La Revue du Monde Noir*) and
contributions from thinkers such as Franz Boas, Jean Finot, Author de
Gobineau, along with discourses from Alphanse de Lamartine and his
drama *Toussaint L'Ouverture*. *La Revue du Monde
Noir*, launched in October 1931, was conceptualized at the Clamart
salon (located in the Paris apartment of Jane and Paulette Nardal) and
managed by the Nardal sisters along with Leo Sajous, Clara
Shepard, and Louis-Jean Finot. An original issue of *La
Revue du Monde Noir* is in Cooper's archived papers at Howard
University's Moorland-Springarn Center. Priced at 7 francs
50 or 30 cents U.S., the issue contains such contributions as
"Race Equality" by Louis-Jean Finot, "The Creole
Race" by Maitre Jean-Louis, a poem by Claude McKay, and
"A Negro Woman speaks at Cambridge and Geneva" by Paulette
Nardal.




The introduction to Cooper's thesis outlines the origins of the
institution of "Negro slave trade," which was
"founded on the abuse of power...and maintained by
violence" (SFHR, 31). Cooper discusses the impact of the slave
trade on mortality rates of the enslaved (e.g. through the middle
passage) along with the ways in which slavery and colonialism
underdeveloped the continent of Africa while enriching the Spanish,
Portuguese, Iberian peoples, the United States, England and
France--among others. She highlights the harms of slavery for
both the slavers and the enslaved while also underscoring the
prominent role of slavery in the colonial system. In France in
particular she asserts, "the colonists, the rich merchants, had
too much to gain from the shameful traffic in slaves to be willing
even to consider the possibility of suppressing slavery. Since the
time of Colbert, too many French ports had been developed and enriched
by the trade" (SFHR, 37). The struggle against slavery and the
opposing interests of the colonists against the Blacks would have been
one-sided in the interest of the colonist, Cooper asserts, if not for
the establishment of the Friends of the Blacks by Brissot,
Sieyes, and Condorcet in 1787, (SFHR, 37).




Against this background, in the first chapter of the thesis Cooper
details the prosperity of the French colonies, especially Santo
Domingo, on the eve of the Revolution ("The Social Conditions of
the French-American Colonies; the Class Structure"). She
describes the various classes including the "petite blancs"
(lower middle class whites), "mulatto class" (sometimes
rather well educated and extremely desirous of affirming their equality
with whites), "colored men" (a term used by the petit
blancs that included both those with a mixture of the white race and
the black race, as well as the pure Negro natives of Africa or the
colonies), and "freed men" (who were generally poor and who
were almost as jealous of the mulattos as of the whites), (SFHR,
44-45). 




From here Cooper details the geography of Santo Domingo and the
conflicts (including slave revolts and the violence of the colonial and
slave systems) that contributed to the white colonists of Santo Domingo
approaching the National Assembly of France. Disturbed about the
influence of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, the colonists
established an adversarial group called the Massiac Club, which claimed
the right to be represented in the National Assembly. The
unexpected result was the increased visibility of the colonial problem
for the public, which actually strengthened the position of the Friends
of the Blacks concerning the problem of human liberty and equality
between the races, (SFHR, 48-49). Cooper states, "Thus the
Friends of the Blacks profited from the admission of the deputies of
Santo Domingo to draw attention toward the great problem of equality of
the races, and to the concurrent problem of the suppression of
slavery" (SFHR, 53). Another outcome of this debate was
the question of the principle of colonial representation--the idea
that the colonies are a part of the national territory of France, not
just lands to be exploited, (SFHR, 56).




In Chapter Two, Cooper describes the formation of "The
American Colonists"--a committee of colored men organized
by "the elder Raimond, Jacques and Vincent Oge"
(SFHR, 59). They sought the admission of a deputy to represent
them in the Constituent Assembly and demanded "the absolute
equality of colored men and free Negroes with white colonists"
(SFHR, 60). This reopened debates about the problem of equality
of the races in the colonies and raised "A graver question, that
of the abolition of the trade and slavery" (SFHR, 60). In
addition to considering the "fate of the blacks" there are
also the other events of the Revolution in France including Bastille,
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the height of the
reign of terror, (SFHR, 61). Cooper asserts, "It is certain
that if the whites had adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward the
free mulattos many disasters could have been avoided" (SFHR,
63). But the colonist joined forces with the Massiac Club to
prevent the emancipation of slaves and to establish a force in the
colonies that could resist any legislation against slavery. The
result was, in part, the establishment of a Colonial Committee that
would centralize colonial questions in the hands of a few and remove
them from the Friends of the Blacks, (SFHR, 65). Cooper is clear
that financial concerns outweighed ideals about freedom and racial
equality. She argues that the establishment of this Colonial
Committee was indicative of the necessity to "slow down a
revolutionary moment menacing the whole of the West Indies"
coupled with a desire to protect the financial interests and national
wealth of France insofar as "trade with Santo Domingo represented
two thirds of the total trade of France" (SFHR, 66).




The Friends of the Blacks were "prepared to sacrifice
everything for the success of their cause," and the Massaic Club
colonialists "were just as dedicated to their detestable
cause" (SFHR, 71). Barnave presented a decree (March
1790), which contained the principle that the colonies were to provide
their own constitution, thereby ending arbitrary administration. 
The colonists then demanded independence, but "Without making any
distinction between the whites and the colored men, without even
mentioning one or the other, they contented themselves in the famous
Article IV, with conferring civil rights upon 'all property
owners of twenty-five years of age,' who possessed real estate,
or lacking such property, had been domiciled in and had contributed to
the parish for two years" (SFHR, 71). Cooper notes that
the ambiguity of the article allowed landholding mulattoes to hope that
these civil rights applied to them "without assuring them any
benefit" (SFHR, 72). Furthermore, colored men in Paris
were alarmed by the silence of the decree on their particular
rights. Just as mulattos were seeking the same rights as whites,
Blacks would go on to claim the same rights as mulattos. The
result of the decree was resistance and insurrection. "In
spite of all of these measures," Cooper notes, "it was in
vain that the Constituent Assembly and its Colonial Committee had hoped
to save the colonies from danger of insurrections," (SFHR, 77). 
The decree of May 15, 1791 which accorded political rights to mulattoes
born of free parents and recognizing them as active citizens was a
defeat for the colonists, yet they refused to comply with it (SFHR,
80). The white colonists revolted, the decree was retracted
(though not altogether annulled), and the Friends of the Blacks and the
Jacobin Club were brought closer together.




In the third chapter Cooper documents the various Civil Commissions
sent to Santo Domingo along with the resulting reports and decrees that
followed with those visits. White colonists continued to act in
open opposition to any semblance of political equality (which they
feared might also lead to social equality) for mulattoes (SFHR,
88). She notes, "...April 4th a new
National Law annulled the Constitutional Decree of September
24th, 1791, conferred upon colored men and free Negroes
equal political rights with whites, and ordered a new election, more in
accord with principles of equality, of the colonial and parochial
assemblies which had been reinvigorated by then to enforce the new Law
the [a]ssembly provided for the appointment of three new Civil
Commissioners having dictatorial powers and supported by a sufficient
military force" (SFHR, 88).




In time the Commissioners "let the blacks do as they
wished," emancipation was proclaimed in the West and in the
South, "Negroes everywhere refused to work, and economic
conditions worsened to the extent that insubordination
increased" (SFHR, 95-97). In examining the correspondence
of this particular period, Cooper notes the descriptions of
insurrections and loss of property, and the seemingly secondary
attention to the question of slavery. She asserts, "Thus we
find one more argument in support of the idea, which inevitably grows
stronger as one reads so many convincing documents, that the question
of the emancipation of the slaves had only been considered and embraced
by a few enthusiasts, idealists like Brissot and his friends...who
had only seen a problem to be resolved by humanity and theory where in
fact a thorough practical preparation was necessary" (SFHR,
98).




Cooper also outlines the events leading up to the rise in power of
Toussaint Louverture (whom she describes as "a grand
figure" "intelligent and capable" and "endowed
with a strong personality that towered over those of his
companions" (SFHR, 101). A leader able to "see and
foresee," Louverture sent Sonthoax back to France followed by
Hedouville and Raimond. In a campaign against Rigaurd for
power, Louverture facilitated massacres of mulattoes in the North
and eventually "made himself master of all the Spanish
territory" (SFHR, 106). Expecting a strong response from
France and Napoleon, Louverture forced Blacks back to work to increase
the prosperity of the island and "permitted no revolt, finishing
off insurrectionists swiftly..." (SFHR, 108). In the
end, Louverture would be sent to France where he died on April 7, 1803. Napoleon went on to reestablish slavery
and slave trade in the French colonies. Cooper observes,
"In truth, it seems that Napoleon never gave more than absent
minded thoughts to the obviously complicated problem presented by that
too distant island" (SFHR, 111). A new "war of
extermination" broke out against the "last vestiges of the
white race at Santo Domingo" (SFHR, 111). 
Louverture's successor Dessallines declared the island
independent and restored the Indian name of Haiti "so that there
would no longer be reminders of the European occupation" (SFHR,
111).




In her conclusion, Cooper reflects on the various factors that
complicated the entire situation from the economic conditions in
revolutionary France to the issue of slavery and the problem of
race--a problem that was not simply Black and white, but also
involved "the intermediate mulatto," and finally, a
political problem, (SFHR, 114). Cooper describes the political problem
in this way, "The change in regime was not accepted in these
distant countries as it should have been, because it was not
understood. The majority of the colonists remained royalists. *And
so did the blacks*. A war of parties was added to the war of
races" (SFHR, 114).


## 5. Other Select Essays and Writings: Ruminations Beyond *Voice*


### *The Ethics of the Negro Question*




In "The Ethics of the Negro Question" (1902) Cooper
confronts the hypocrisy of Christianity in America. According to
Cooper, the Negro "stands in the United States of America today
as the passive and silent rebuke to the Nation's Christianity, the
great gulf between its professions and its practices, furnishing the
chief ethical element in its politics, ...[and pointing the
finger at so-called] ideals of civilization" (VAJC, 206). This
sentiment is reiterated in "The Negro in American
Literature" where Cooper asserts that the color caste in this
country is a "scathing rebuke to weak-eyed Christians who cannot
read the golden rule across the color line" (VAJC, 145).


 Cooper recounts the harsh circumstances under which the Negro is
uprooted and transplanted to this "Christian" nation,
reduced to chattel and beasts of burden for the purpose of producing
wealth for white men and the economy of the nation (VAJC, 207). Like
Frederick Douglass and others, Cooper underscores this
nation's failure to adhere to the declaration that "all men are created equal" from the beginning. Her
use of language and imagery are worth quoting at length. She
asserts:



> 
> 
> Professing a religion of sublime altruism, a political faith in the
> inalienable rights of man as man, these jugglers with reason and
> conscience were at the same moment stealing heathen from their far
> away homes, forcing them with lash and gun to unrequited toil, making
> it a penal offense to teach them to read the word of God,--nay,
> more, were even begetting and breeding mongrels of their own flesh
> among these helpless creatures and pocketing the guilty increase, the
> price of their own blood in unholy dollars and cents. (VAJC, 207)
> 


 

Cooper not only highlights the discontinuity between religion,
faith, reason, and conscience on the one hand and the atrocities of
slavery on the other, she also exposes the white male slave owner as a
rapist who fathers children by Black female slaves and then exploits
the labor of those children who must assume the slave status of their
mothers. This is a constant point of emphasis by Cooper not only
because of its prevalence during and after slavery, but also because
of her own her lived experience. Added to all of this is the problem
of lynching--adeptly described by Ida B. Wells-Barnett as "Our
National Crime".


### "My Racial Philosophy" (Survey Question)




Cooper wrote "My Racial Philosophy" (1930) in response to
a survey distributed by Charles S. Johnson to Black college
graduates. In 1927 Johnson became chair of a newly formed social
science department at Fisk University. Other prominent members of the
department faculty at that time included now famed social scientists
Robert E. Park and E. Franklin Frazier. The formation of this
department at Fisk was made possible by a $200,000 contribution from
the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial--for whom Spelman College,
the renowned historically Black college for women in Atlanta, GA is
also named (Gasman 1999, 6). By 1930, Johnson was collecting data from
this survey taken by Cooper and numerous others, and by 1946 Johnson
had become the sixth president, though the first Black president, of
Fisk. 




The question to which Cooper was replying in Johnson's 1930
survey is (question # 65): "Have you a 'racial
philosophy' that can be briefly stated?" Cooper begins her
two-page reply by emphasizing the fact that race and gender prejudice
is often overlapping, particularly for Black women. The analysis
of race and gender intersectionality dominates Cooper's
philosophy, not only here, but throughout *A Voice from the
South*. Here she asserts, "the whips and stings of
prejudice, whether of color or sex, find me neither too calloused to
suffer, nor too ignorant to know what is due me" (VAJC, 236).
 Cooper adds that one would be mistaken to "imagine that
oppression goes only with color" and explains, "When I
encounter brutality I need not always charge it to my
race" (VAJC, 236). Even more significant in Cooper's
racial philosophy is the correlation she draws between prejudice,
civilization, and our responsibility in the formation of our
civilization. Cooper claims that the brutality of prejudice is
"chargeable to the imperfections in the civilization...for
which as a teacher and a trained thinker I take my share in
responsibility" (VAJC, 236).


## 6. Biographical Sketch




Anna Julia Cooper was born into slavery as Annie Hayward in Raleigh,
North Carolina on August 10, likely in 1858 (though some sources date
her birth in 1859) before the Civil War. Cooper describes her
mother Hannah Haywood as "the finest woman" she had ever
known who despite being "untutored" was still able to
 "read her bible and write a
 little."[8] 
 Cooper presumes that her father was her
mother's master, adding that her mother "was always too
modest and shamefaced ever to mention him." With this one
sentence Cooper captures both the plights of enslaved Black women of
that time--being untutored and sexually exploited; as well as
the significant triumphs--learning to read and write against the odds
(and in many cases against the law).




At the young age of nine, barely removed from slavery, Cooper (then
Annie Haywood) begins school at Saint Augustine Normal School in Raleigh,
North Carolina where she continued her education for about fourteen
years. During this time she also worked as a tutor and
teacher. Cooper completed studies at what became Saint
Augustine's Normal Collegiate School in 1877 and then married
George Cooper. The newlyweds continued to study and teach at Saint
Augustine's, but George Cooper, who went on to become an
Episcopal priest, died two short years later. In a letter seeking
admission to Oberlin College in Ohio, Cooper lists the content of her
previous studies including English; Latin: *Cesar* (seven
books), Virgil's *Aeneid* (six books), Sallust's
*Cataline* and *Jugurtha*, a few orations of
*Cicero*; Greek: White's first lessons, Goodwin's
Greek Reader--including selections from Xenophon, Plato,
Herodotus, and Thucydides, the *Iliad*; along with Algebra and
Geometry. It is obvious that her education was deeply rooted in the
history of Western philosophy and the classics. Cooper gains
admission and leaves Saint Augustine's for Oberlin
College in 1881 where she goes on to earn a B.A. in mathematics in 1884
and then an M.A. for college teaching in 1887.




Although Cooper's affinity for the Western philosophical canon,
languages, and advanced mathematics at times resulted in her being
misread as elitist, it must be noted that these academic and scholarly
achievements are complemented by her lifetime commitment to education,
activism, and community service. The depth of this commitment is
evidenced by her work as a tutor in North Carolina in her youth, and
later as a teacher at Saint Augustine's College and Wilberforce College
where she taught mathematics, literature, and modern languages. Cooper
would have many more years of teaching and administrative experience
at M Street High School in Washington D.C., where she was appointed
principal from January 2, 1902 to June 30, 1906. After a controversy
at M Street High School, Cooper left Washington D.C. to teach for
several years at Lincoln University in Missouri. The controversy
centered on claims about the immorality of the teachers and misconduct
among students. It has been speculated that these charges were raised
because some were disgruntled by Cooper's commitment to teaching
classical texts and languages--an approach often associated with
Du Bois's educational philosophy rather than Washington's emphasis on
vocational training. But Louise Daniele Hutchinson has made the case
that Percy M. Hughes, the white director of Washington High Schools at
the time, played a role in this controversy insofar as he brought the
charges against Cooper. Despite public support for Cooper, the
brouhaha ultimately resulted in her not being reappointed as principal
of M Street High School in 1906. Cooper did eventually return to teach
at M Street from 1910 to 1930, before teaching at Frelinghuysen
University where she held the office of the president from
1930 to 1941.




In addition to these educational and administrative contributions,
Cooper also did work at a War Camp in Indianapolis, supervised a
playground in West Virginia, supervised the Colored Settlement House in
Washington D.C., and helped to facilitate the opening of the first YWCA
chapter for Black women in Washington, D.C. She was also very active
in the racial and gender uplift movement, including the Negro
Women's Club Movement--playing a leadership role in the
Washington Colored Woman's League which eventually became a part
of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. 
Cooper was a speaker at the Hampton Conference in 1892, a speaker at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and she co-founded the Colored Women's League in 1894 in Washington, D.C. She helped
organize and also addressed the Pan African Conference in London in
1900 (which later became the Pan African Congress) before touring
Europe with her foster daughter Lula Love (visiting the Paris
Exposition, Oberammergau, Munich, and several cities in Italy). 
Furthermore, Shirley Moody-Turner has noted that Cooper was active in
the Hampton Folklore Society (working as an interim editor for the
*Southern Workman*) and the Washington Negro Folklore Society
(as a founder and corresponding secretary). Some have claimed
that Cooper was the only female member of the American Negro Academy
(though others have argued that she was not an official
member).




In 1925, at the age of 66, Cooper earned a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in
Paris, France becoming the fourth Black American woman to earn a
Ph.D. The first three black women to earn the Ph.D. in the U.S.
include Sadie T.M. Alexander (University of Pennsylvania), Georgianna
Rosa Simpson (University of Chicago), and Eva B. Dykes (Radcliff
College) and each did so in 1921. Cooper recalls the Herculean
effort required to complete her exams and thesis for the doctorate in
*The Third Step*. She took courses at La Guilde
Internationale, Paris in French Literature, History, and Phonetics
during the summer months in 1911, 1912, and 1913. After starting
her doctoral studies at Columbia University in New York in the summer
of 1914, Cooper would then take guardianship of five children
(her great-nieces and nephews) and in 1916 she purchased a five-bedroom
home in which to raise them. By 1917 she earned thirty-two
credits and was certified in French, Latin, and Greek at
Columbia. However, Cooper could not meet the one-year residential
requirements as she was still working at M Street High School in
Washington, D.C. She later decided to transfer her credits from
Columbia to the University of Paris in France. In December
of 1923 Cooper came down with influenza and asked for a sick leave from
her teaching obligations. By February 1924 she selected her
thesis topic, but then learned that she had only sixty days to return
to her teaching post or be "dropped" from her position at M
Street High School. Cooper returned to her teaching position on
the sixtieth day and continued to do research and writing on the thesis
at the Library of Congress on evenings and weekends. She defended
her thesis on March 23, 1925 and received her *diplome de
Docteur es lettres de la Faculte de Paris* on
December 29, 1925 in a ceremony supported by the Alpha Kappa Alpha
sorority at Howard University.




Cooper continued teaching at M Street High School until 1930. 
She also taught at Frelinghuysen University, holding the office of the
president from 1930 to 1941. Over the decades various magazines and
newspapers published several of her commentaries on the state of the
race. Cooper lived to be 105 years old, residing in Washington
D.C. until her death on February 27, 1964. Memorial services were
held in Raleigh, North Carolina where she is buried. The cemetery
gravestone reads:




> 
> 
> Anna J. Cooper, Ph.D. 1859-1964  
>  
> Educator,
> Author, Poet and  
>  
> School Administrator  
>  
> Early Advocate of Equal Rights  
>  
> For Blacks And Women  
>  
> A Graduate Of St. Augustine's College  
>  
> Erected 1979.