Question

According to Anna Julia Cooper, what role did women play in American history? What role should they play in modern society?

Answer 1

• During the 1890s Cooper became involved in the black women’s club movement. Women’s club members were generally educated middle-class women who believed that it was their duty to help less-fortunate African Americans. During that time Cooper became a popular public speaker. She addressed a wide variety of groups, including the National Conference of Colored Women in 1895 and the first Pan-African Conference in 1900.
• 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”. Cooper also promoted the idea that the Black woman’s particular perspective on society was worthy of attention.
• Cooper takes an intersectional approach to examining the interlocking systems of race, gender, and class oppression—explicitly articulating how Black women are simultaneously impacted by racism (the race problem) and sexism (the woman question) and yet she is either an unknown or unacknowledged (by white women, white men, or Black men) factor in examining or eliminating these systems of oppression.
• For these reasons, Cooper argues, Black women have a unique epistemological standpoint from which to observe society and its oppressive systems as well as a unique ethical contribution to make in confronting and correcting these oppressive systems.
• Cooper declared herself “the voice of the South,” and that she spoke for its black women, who had only been relatively recently freed from the degradation of legalized slavery when her best-known book was published in 1892. Scholars consider A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South the first work by an African American feminist.
• Feminist and African American historians have deemed A Voice from the South the wellspring of modern black feminist thought. Even legislated equal rights for white women in America were still nothing but a hope at the time of its publication, and the idea that African American women should and could demand that their voices be heard and their concerns be addressed was revolutionary.
• She spoke of the African American women she met over the years who had taken on great financial sacrifice in order that their children could obtain an education and cited figures that showed remarkable progress in the number of schools open to the race, as well as its increasing literacy rates since 1865 and the eradication of slavery.
• She urged her listeners to embrace the notion of solidarity with their African American sisters and work together so that opportunities being discussed—potentially the right to vote, for instance—would be open to all.