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Anna J. Cooper Quotes

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African-American scholars in United States history.

Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper went on to receive a world-class education and claim power and prestige in academic and social circles. In 1924, she received her PhD from the Sorbonne, University of Paris. Cooper became the fourth African-American woman to earn a doctoral degree. She was also a prominent member of Washington, D.C.'s African-American community and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Cooper made contributions to social science fields, particularly in sociology. Her first book, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South, is widely acknowledged as one of the first articulations of Black feminism, giving Cooper the often-used title of "the Mother of Black Feminism". Wikipedia  

✵ 10. August 1858 – 27. February 1964
Anna J. Cooper photo
Anna J. Cooper: 8   quotes 1   like

Famous Anna J. Cooper Quotes

“Our God is power; strength, our standard of excellence, inherited from barbarian ancestors through a long line of male progenitors, the Law Salic permitting no feminine modifications.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 53

“To me, faith means treating the truth as true.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 298

“Since the idea of order and subordination succumbed to barbarian brawn and brutality in the fifth century, the civilized world has been like a child brought up by his father. It has needed the great mother heart to teach it to be pitiful, to love mercy, to succor the weak and care for the lowly.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 51

“When colored persons have been employed it was too often as machines or as manikins. There has been no disposition, generally, to get the black man's ideal or to let his individuality work by its own gravity.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 37

“I am my Sister's keeper! Should be the hearty response of every man and woman of the race, and this conviction should purify and exalt the narrow, selfish and petty personal aims of life into a noble and sacred purpose.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 32

“We too often mistake individuals’ honor for race development and so are ready to substitute pretty accomplishments for sound sense and earnest purpose.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 29

“The idea of the radical amelioration of womankind, reverence for woman as woman regardless of rank, wealth, or culture, was to come from that rich and bounteous fountain from which flow all our liberal and universal ideas—the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 14

“Respect for woman, the much lauded chivalry of the Middle Ages, meant what I fear it still means to some men in our own day—respect for the elect few among whom they expect to consort.”

Anna J. Cooper

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 14

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