Anna Julia Cooper - Feminist and Scholar

This is a textual analysis of Anna Julia Cooper''s feminist writings as expressed in the first four essays of her book A Voice from the South published in 1892. It aims to show Cooper as an avant garde thinker who disected the interconnection between race, class and gender oppression black women faced at the end of the nineteenth century. This discussion addresses the fact that Cooper was writing on key aspects of feminism in 1892 and went largely unheard until just recently. In the 1980''s black feminists began to write about the so called double jeopardy of race and gender oppression, but were largely unaware of Cooper''s previously made argument. Thus this text is to be seen as a continuation of the discourse on the various intertwined causes for black women''s second class status in American society.