11/27/2025
Dr. Anna Julia Cooper is recognized as one of the most influential Black women intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she is the only other Black American quoted in the U.S. passport.
Her words on pages 26–27 read of the U.S. Passport:
“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class; it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”
Born into slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1858, Cooper became a pioneering scholar, educator, and activist. She pursued higher education at Oberlin College and later earned her Ph.D. from the University of Paris–Sorbonne in 1924—making her one of the first African-American women to achieve this milestone.
Throughout her career, she taught and led schools for Black students, including Washington, D.C.’s historic M Street (later Dunbar) High School. She championed education for Black women and advocated early for women’s rights, civil rights, and social justice.
Her landmark book, A Voice from the South (1892), is among the first works to examine race, gender, and justice from a Black woman’s perspective, influencing later civil rights and feminist movements.
Cooper lived to 105, remaining active in intellectual life until her final years. Her legacy endures as a trailblazing thinker whose voice helped shape the fight for equality and the recognition of Black women’s leadership.
