Famous African American Teachers

Introduction: Dr. Charles K. Ross, Director, African-American Studies
The University of Mississippi

Africans, delivered to America during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, brought with them a commitment to education. This desire for learning caused them to be placed in the difficult position of forcibly learning English but not legally being taught how to read and write. Although caught in this paradox, African Americans such as Jupiter Hammon, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Mary Jane Patterson, and Booker T. Washington all had significant educational accomplishments.

Several African Americans received degrees from white institutions of higher learning during the 19th century and historically black colleges were formed beginning in 1837 with the establishment of Cheyney State Training School in Pennsylvania.

With the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, African Americans in the South found themselves retrenched to land as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, legally stripped of the right to vote, and socially segregated. Against this backdrop, education became the leading tool in the fight for equal rights politically, economically and socially. The individuals featured during Black History Month by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning represent and epitomize some of the many accomplishments, contributions, and achievements by African American teachers.

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (1858-1964) lived a long life, working to promote the causes of African Americans and women at a tumultuous era in time. She was born a slave in Raleigh, North Carolina near the end of the Civil War. Her parents were Hannah Stanley Haywood and Hannah’s master, George Washington Haywood. .

When Anna was 9, she attended St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute for free Blacks on scholarship. Later, she earned a full scholarship to Oberlin College in Oberlin Ohio and earned a master's in mathematics in 1885. In 1877, Anna married George Cooper, another St. Augustine graduate. His died in 1879 and she never remarried. She began her doctorate in 1914 at Columbia University and finished it in 1924 at the University of Paris-Sorbonne to become the fourth African-American woman to earn a Ph.D.

Anna Julia Cooper was a successful teacher. She taught at St. Augustine, first as a pupil-teacher and then as a teacher after her graduation and until her marriage. In 1887, Anna took a teaching position at Washington’s M Street School. Her success in the classroom led to a promotion to principal of the school in 1901. Her success also led to her dismissal as principal in 1906, however she stayed on to teach at M Street School for four decades.

Anna Julia Cooper’s was the subject of heated debate due to her educational philosophy that African Americans were not intellectually inferior but were, in fact, capable of achieving the same level of academic achievement as white students. Many of her graduates went on to higher education at Ivy League schools, infuriating the Washington School Board. Her refusal to change her teaching practices led to her dismissal.

Anna Julia Cooper also worked hard to expand the opportunities for women. Early in her education, she fought to take college preparation classes open only to men at St. Augustine’s. Her accomplishments were also ignored by the African-American male leaders of her time, namely W.E.B. DuBois and Frederick Douglass. Despite those challenges, Anna was an important writer, lecturer, and social organizer. She helped organize the Colored Women's YWCA in 1905, spoke internationally at the 1893 World's Congress of Representative Women and the 1900 Pan-African Congress Conference in London, and wrote A Voice from the South by a Black Woman from the South in 1892.

Long after her death, her words, printed on every United States passport, stand as a legacy to her efforts to fight for equal opportunity for all Americans: "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." – Anna Julia Cooper

References:

Epstein, B., Khomassi, N., and Ben-Elihttp, G. Anna Julia Cooper accessed at http://www.gwu.edu/~e73afram/be-nk-gbe.html on February 22, 2008

http://www.oberlin.edu/colrelat/blackHistory/discovermore.html accesed February 20, 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_J._Cooper accessed February 22, 2008.

Archives: Teachers featured earlier this month
John Robert Edward Lee
Sarah Mapps Douglass
Mordecai Wyatt Johnson
Mary Smith Peake
Peter Humphries Clark
Mary McLeod Bethune
William Leo Hansberry
Inez Beverly Prosser
W.E.B. DuBois
Hallie Quinn Brown
Father Patrick Francis Healy
Charlotte Forten Grimke
Harper Councill Trenholm
Mary Church Terrell
Alexander Twilight
John Hope
Euphemia Lofton-Haynes
Booker T. Washington
Margaret Murray Washington
Robert Russa Moton
Fanny Jackson Coppin
Ellis O. Knox