![]() We are the heirs of a past which was not our fathers’ molding. We look forward with hope and trust that the same God whose guiding hand led our fathers through and out of the gall and bitterness of oppression, will still lead and direct their children, to the honor of His name, and for their ultimate salvation. We look within that we may gather together once more our forces, and, by improved and more practical methods, address ourselves to the tasks before us. We look back, not to become inflated with conceit because of the depths from which we have arisen, but that we may learn wisdom from experience. It is well enough to pause a moment for retrospection, introspection, and prospection. ![]() The race is just twenty-one years removed from the conception and experience of a chattel, just at the age of ruddy manhood. ![]() It at least proves that there is nothing irretrievably wrong in the shape of the black man’s skull, and that under given circumstances his development, downward or upward, will be similar to that of other average human beings. Then, “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” 1 There is something to encourage and inspire us in the advancement of individuals since their emancipation from slavery. It is absurd to quote statistics showing the Negro’s bank account and rent rolls, to point to the hundreds of newspapers edited by colored men and lists of lawyers, doctors, professors, DDs, LL Ds, etc., etc., etc., while the source from which the life-blood of the race is to flow is subject to taint and corruption in the enemy’s camp. Noteworthy in the present excerpt are her insistence that racial uplift begins with the work of mothers, and her thoughts on the conditions of racial conflict and harmony in America. Excepting a 5-year period in which she was dismissed in a dispute with the school’s Board of Trustees, Cooper’s career at WCHS/M Street/ Dunbar spanned forty-three years, from 1887 to 1930, after which she served as president of Frelinghuysen University, also in Washington, until 1943.Ĭooper’s most important writing is her collection of essays, A Voice from the South, published in 1892. Under her leadership Dunbar became famous for its success in sending graduates to the nation’s most elite institutions of higher education. She earned a PhD from the University of Paris in 1925 at the age of sixty-seven.Ĭooper taught, then served as principal at the Washington Colored High School, which was later renamed, first as M Street High School and, in 1916, as Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School. ![]() She continued her education, completing BA and MA degrees at Oberlin College in 18. She never remarried, her status as a widow according her the freedom to pursue a professional career. Augustine student, George Cooper, in 1877, but was widowed only two years later. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute, an Episcopal school founded in 1868 for the benefit of newly emancipated children, where she studied classics. Young Annie received her early education at St. Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) was a highly accomplished educator, author, and organizer, and an early advocate for the importance of women in the promotion of the equal rights cause.Ĭooper was born into slavery as Annie Haywood in Raleigh, North Carolina, the daughter of an enslaved mother, Hannah, and the man who held legal title to her as slaveowner, George Haywood.
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