How did the challenges Cooper faced impact her professional and personal life?
Answers
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.” 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.