When Anna Julia Cooper died at the age of 105 in 1964, she left behind accomplishments remarkable for anyone, let alone a woman of color at a time when social taboos, laws, and even attitudes of fellow African American activists were obstacles to achievement. Cooper declared herself "the voice of the South," speaking for black women, recently freed from 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.

Most sources cite Cooper's birth year as August 10, 1858. Her mother, Hannah Stanley Haywood, was a slave; Cooper's father was probably her mother's owner, George Washington Haywood. Cooper was six or seven when the Civil War ended. She attended St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, created by Episcopal funds to provide education for newly freed blacks.

By the age of eight...