All prejudices, whether of race, sect or sex, class pride and caste distinctions are the belittling inheritance and badge of snobs and prigs. (p. 105)

These words were written in the 1890s by Anna Julia Cooper, a Black feminist educator, scholar, and activist, who was born a slave in North Carolina and died more than one hundred years later in Washington, DC. In The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, editors Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan bring together a selection of Cooper’s writings — enhanced by their commentaries — that reveal a complex thinker whose ideas about race, gender, and class, written in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, ring true and clear in the twenty-first. One of the first to write about the unique position of the woman of color — “confronted by both a woman question and a race problem” (p. 112) — Cooper also promoted the idea that the Black woman’s particular perspective on society was worthy of attention.

The introductory chapter of the book, an essay by Lemert that blends biographical detail with theoretical analysis, gives the reader a solid historical and conceptual context in which to read Cooper’s own words. As the subtitle indicates, the volume includes a reprint of A Voice from the South — Cooper’s best-known work, first published in 1892. This is presented in two parts: “The Colored Woman’s Office” and “Race and Culture.” The first part is focused on the “hitherto voiceless Black Woman of America” (p. 51). One chapter, “Womanhood: The Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race,” is the text of a speech read before an audience of Black male clergy that posits the moral superiority of the Black woman. Another chapter discusses the common oppression of women and the colored races who are “crushed under the iron heel of Anglo-Saxon power and selfishness” (p. 108). The other chapters in the first part treat the status of women in general and in higher education in particular. In the second part, Cooper looks at race and culture from a broader perspective in thought-provoking essays, such as “Has America a Race Problem? If So, How Can It Best Be Solved?” and “What Are We Worth?”

The remaining three sections of the book include essays, letters, and papers — some of which have never before appeared in print — that span the wide range of Cooper’s thought. Section three contains her writings on “Feminism, Social Service, Education, and Race Politics.” The next section contains chapters translated from her doctoral thesis on French attitudes toward slavery during the French Revolution (which she wrote and defended at the Sorbonne at the age of sixty-six); Cooper’s notes from her oral defense of the thesis make up another chapter. The final section includes letters and memoirs reflecting on her life, and a chronology. An editorial commentary introduces each section and each chapter within each section; these notes serve to place the writings in historical context and provide background details.

Lemert’s introductory chapter depicts Cooper as forthright and self-assured, yet complex, like her writings. He notes that “to understand Cooper is to come face-to-face with a woman who lived with heroic dignity while refusing all along to be exactly what others would have her be” (p. 3). After just two years of marriage in her early twenties, she lived the rest of her long life as a widow and later as a single parent to seven foster children — with five of them coming to live with her when she was in her fifties. Her life was “centered deeply in the virtues of home, religion, and proper public conduct” (p. 4). A consummate teacher, Cooper retired after forty years of teaching to run a college for working adults — sometimes holding classes in her home. Yet, her public image was ambiguous. During her life, she was not recognized as the public intellectual that her writings reveal her to be. She apparently sought neither celebrity nor notoriety, yet she was involved in controversy, notably during her tenure at Washington, DC’s famous “colored” M Street High School. Described as “a brilliant teacher and an effective school leader” (p. 9), Cooper served as principal there from 1901 to 1906, building a classical curriculum that was solid enough for its graduates to be accepted to elite White colleges (including Harvard). However, she was dismissed from this position, apparently because she did not adhere to the prevailing ideology of racial uplift through industrial education rather than intellectual achievement, as espoused by Booker T. Washington, who was then the most powerful Black spokesperson in the nation. After a five-year stint teaching at the university level, Cooper returned to M Street High School and taught for nearly twenty more years. While she did not achieve the fame of contemporaries like W. E. B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell, Cooper’s achievements were notable: her scholarly work in the French language at Columbia University and the Sorbonne, her life dedicated to teaching and service, and the many speeches and writings that illustrate the moral force of her social criticism regarding prejudice based on gender, race, and class.

Cooper has been criticized for her flowery literary style and use of allusions that would be unfamiliar to many of the poor and working-class Black people for whom she spent most of her life speaking and working. Some have found her too religious, too solitary, or too caught up in the image of true womanhood. Politically, her ideas may not always come across as progressive, yet she is viewed as “a self-conscious social critic of internal colonization” (p. 40).

However one may perceive Anna Julia Cooper — and readers will certainly be challenged to draw their own conclusions — Lemert and Bhan are to be commended for bringing her important work and clearly articulated ideas to a contemporary audience. Having access to these primary sources might motivate further investigation of her biography, to flesh out the intriguing person behind the words. The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper will surely be an instructive and engaging read for those interested in African American educational history or feminist philosophy, as well as for those who enjoy reading astute observations on race, gender, and class in society.

C.S.S.