This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

186COOPER, ANNA JULIA HAYWOODson City, Missouri. When a new administration assumed control at M Street in1911, Cooper was invited to return there as a teacher rather than as a principal.She accepted this offer and remained at the school for nearly 20 years. She beganstudying for a doctorate at Columbia University in 1914, but after traveling extensivelyin Europe during summer vacations, she eventually transferred her creditsto the University of Paris. She completed her dissertation at the Sorbonne in1925. In that work, entitled “L’Attitude de la France à l’égard de l’esclavagependant la Révolution” (later published in English as Slavery and the FrenchRevolutionists, [1788–1805]), Cooper studied the impact of slavery in the Frenchcolony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti) on the development of the FrenchRevolution.Cooper’s first and most important book, A Voice from the South, was publishedin 1892. A collection of her lectures and speeches, this book contained Cooper’sthoughts both on the role of women in the African American community and onthe importance of education in uplifting the black race. One of the book’s essayswas an address she had delivered before a gathering of black Episcopal clergy in1886. In that speech she praised the “quiet, chaste dignity and decorous solemnity”of the Episcopal Church, which had a distinct appeal to many “thinkingcolored men.” Despite this advantage, the Episcopal Church had failed to gainmany African American adherents because its white leadership consistently insultedand mistreated the black priests who led its parishes. Cooper understoodthe situation faced by black clergy extremely well, for she was an active memberof St. Luke’s Church in Washington, D.C., where Alexander Crummell* servedfaithfully as rector for many years.Cooper was active in numerous organizations throughout her long life. She wasthe only woman elected to the American Negro Academy, and she was a featuredspeaker at the historic Pan-African Congress in London in 1900. She was alsoprominently involved in the black women’s club movement, in the Colored YoungWomen’s Christian Association, and in the National Association for the Advancementof Colored People. Although she retired from teaching high school in 1930,she continued to serve as an educator at Frelinghuysen University, an institutionorganized to provide educational opportunities for working adults in Washington‘sblack community. Surviving to the age of 105, Cooper died peacefully athome in February 1964.BibliographyA. Papers at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University; A Voice fromthe South (Xenia, Ohio, 1892); Slavery and the French Revolutionists (1788–1805),ed. Frances Richardson Keller (Lewiston, N.Y., 1988); The Voice of Anna JuliaCooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers,and Letters, ed. Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan (Lanham, Md., 1998).B. ANB 5, 432–33; DANB, 128–29; FD, 110–18; NAW 4, 163–65; Washington Post, 29February 1964; Sharon Harley, “Anna J. Cooper: A Voice for Black Women,” inThe Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images, ed. Sharon Harley and RosalynTerborg-Penn (Port Washington, N.Y., 1978); Ann Allen Shockley, Afro-American