May 18 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for May 18.

Anna Julia Cooper delivered an address at the World’s Congress of Representative Women.

She was an American educator and writer whose book "A Voice From the South by a Black Woman of the South" (1892) became a classic African American feminist text.

Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper went on to receive a world-class education and claim power and prestige in academic and social circles. She was also a prominent member of Washington, D.C.'s African-American community and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

The World's Congress of Representative Women was a week-long convention for the voicing of women's concerns. There, she was one of few African-American women to speak about the racism of which she did not hesitate to criticize.

"I speak for the colored women of the South because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history, and there her destiny evolving"

In 1925, at age 67, she received a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris, having written her dissertation on slavery. 

Pages 26 and 27 of the 2016 U. S. passport contain the following quotation: "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.", by Anna Julia Cooper.

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