Raleigh, North Carolina, 1858.
A baby girl entered the world as property. Her mother, Hannah, was enslaved. Her father was almost certainly the white man who owned them both.
By law, this child had no rights. No future. No voice.
Anna Julia Cooper was about to shatter every expectation.
When emancipation came in 1865, seven-year-old Anna tasted freedom for the first time. And immediately, she knew what she wanted: education.
At age 10, she enrolled in St. Augustine's Normal School to train as a teacher. She absorbed everything they offered. Then she hit a wall.
Advanced courses? Only for male students. Women could learn enough to teach children or support husbands. Nothing more.
Anna thought that was absurd.
She demanded access. They refused. She pushed harder. Finally, they relented—and she outperformed every male student in the school.
At 23, she enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the only institutions admitting both women and Black students.
By 1884, she'd earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics.
By 1887, a master's degree.
A Black woman with two mathematics degrees in the 1880s wasn't just rare. It was supposed to be impossible.
Anna moved to Washington, D.C., and began teaching. By 1902, she'd become principal of M Street High School—later renamed Dunbar High School.
Under her leadership, it became legendary.
She set standards that shocked everyone. Latin. Greek. Advanced mathematics. Classical literature. She prepared Black students for Harvard, Yale, and Oberlin—when America insisted they were only capable of manual labor.
Her students proved America wrong. Repeatedly.
Racist school board members were furious. In 1906, they fabricated charges and forced her out as principal.
She didn't quit. She kept teaching. She kept writing. She kept fighting.
In 1892, she'd published "A Voice from the South"—one of the first books by a Black woman analyzing race and gender in America.
In it, she wrote a sentence that would outlive her:
"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."
Those words now appear in United States passports. Millions carry them around the world, most with no idea who wrote them.
But Anna wasn't finished.
In her 60s—when most would consider retirement—she decided to earn a Ph.D.
American universities blocked her at every turn. So in 1911, she crossed the Atlantic to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.
While teaching full-time in Washington. While raising five adopted children. While traveling back and forth across the ocean.
In 1925, at age 67, the University of Paris awarded her a doctorate.
Anna Julia Cooper became the fourth African American woman ever to earn a Ph.D.—in a foreign language, in a foreign country, while working full-time and raising children.
She taught for 15 more years. At 84, she founded Frelinghuysen University, a night school for working Black adults in Washington, D.C.
She lived to 105.
Born when slavery was legal. Died in 1964—one year after "I Have a Dream," watching the Civil Rights Movement she'd spent her lifetime building toward.
She witnessed the Civil War. Reconstruction. Jim Crow. The Harlem Renaissance. Both World Wars. And the beginning of the end of legal segregation.
When Dr. Anna Julia Cooper died on February 27, 1964, she'd spent 105 years proving that Black women's minds were as powerful as anyone's. That education is a right, not a privilege. That freedom belongs to everyone.
Today, her philosophy travels the world in millions of hands.
Most people carrying her words have no idea who she was. They don't know about the woman born enslaved who earned a Sorbonne doctorate at 67. Who fought to give Black students classical education when America said they should accept less. Who taught for over 60 years while history tried to erase her.
She was born property.
She died one of the most educated women in America, with her words printed in passports around the world.
That's not just a life story. That's a revolution—lived one student, one degree, one defiant act of brilliance at a time.
Every time someone opens an American passport, they carry a piece of her legacy. A reminder that the cause of freedom belongs to everyone.
Most just don't know her name.
Dr. Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964):
Born enslaved. Earned two degrees when Black women weren't supposed to attend college. Became principal when Black women weren't supposed to lead. Earned a Ph.D. at 67 when retirement seemed more reasonable.
Taught for over 60 years. Raised five children. Founded a university. Published groundbreaking scholarship. Lived 105 years.
And wrote one sentence powerful enough to be printed in every American passport.
She didn't wait for permission to be brilliant. She didn't ask for permission to lead. She didn't need permission to change the world.
She just did it—one impossible achievement at a time.
Born property. Died impossible to ignore.
Though history still tries, her words won't let us forget.
On the tribulations of an expatriate in Europe
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Anna Julia Cooper shattered every expectation
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