The Feast day of Anna Julia Haywood Cooper
(1858-1964)
by Liz Goodyear Jones
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.” Matthew 5:14-15
More than a few eye-opening instances in my life have come from being a member of my Diocesan Task force for racial reconciliation. Those “blink” moments for me have been the discovery of how little I really understood about Black history in our common human and American heritage.
One of those telling moments came when I discovered, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper had February 28 as her feast day, though I’d never heard of her.
She was born enslaved on August 10, 1858 and died 105 years later, on February 27 1964, a scholar with a PhD from the Sorbonne. She was the author of only one book, but what a book. Here is it title: A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South,
According to Wikipedia’s Documenting the American South, the text ranges in “issues from women’s rights to racial progress, from segregation to literary criticism”.
Fascinating to me, in her text, she criticized the Episcopal church for not better encouraging black women to become educated. She also said that this was one reason the church had struggled to recruit large numbers of African Americans.
Out of her 105 year life, she became a prominent educator in Washington, D.C. and is considered by many, the Mother of Black Feminism.
Women, Cooper argued are essential to “the regeneration and progress of a race”.
This is a woman who did not hide her light under a bushel but put it all on the lampstand for all to see. She certainly shed a little light on me. I am grateful.