An educational controversy: Anna Julia Cooper's vision of resolution Frances Richardson Keller . NWSA Journal ; Baltimore Vol. 11, Iss. 3, (Fall 1999): 49-67. ProQuest document link ABSTRACT Out of deep educational disagreements that tore black communities asunder in the nineteenth century, an African American woman offered solutions. Anna Julia Cooper pioneered one of the most significant innovations ever introduced in any society. FULL TEXT An Educational Controversy: Anna Julia Cooper's Vision of Resolution Out of deep educational disagreements that tore black communities asunder in the nineteenth century, an African American woman offered solutions. Anna Julia Cooper pioneered one of the most significant innovations ever introduced in any society. She envisioned and brought into being a system we know as community college. She championed and modeled the idea that higher education is a lifelong experience, that it can be available for everyone, and that everyone can work as she or he learns. Distressed by the "old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life" of far too many women, Anna Cooper demonstrated that women, as well as men, can escape ignorance and poverty. In her community she discovered, built, and nurtured a working-adult college; she believed that students need no longer feel thwarted in their life possibilities, that they could learn as they worked. As Booker Washington spoke for industrial education, W.E.B. Du Bois for elite opportunity, and Charles Chesnutt for the vote to achieve both, Anna Cooper offered higher education, vocational education, and lifelong education--and women's inclusion in them all--as the road to equal opportunity. After the American Civil War a long, damaging controversy over the education of African American students took shape. Existing on many levels of society, and compounding the myriad of Reconstruction problems, the controversy drove deep rifts between African American leaders. Not so divisively, it engaged leaders of white communities. Beyond doubt, the fallout from that controversy affected every segment of American life from the late-nineteenth century to the present. Could there have been a resolution of the deep educational disagreements of the black leaders? Through her work and her beliefs a little-sung black woman found ways to resolve the problems that troubled black educators. During her lifetime, in her philosophy, her teaching, and her writing, Anna Julia Cooper demonstrated that the convictions of the black leaders need not rend their communities asunder. Though she was never recognized for the significance of this contribution, Cooper showed that the conflicts could be resolved. She championed opportunities for black students, believing that, especially in education, they must settle for no less than higher education in the liberal arts. At the same time, Cooper believed that the divergent philosophies of Booker Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Charles W. Chesnutt could be accommodated. She thought that African American students should avail themselves of the highest educational opportunities while PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 15 simultaneously paying the costs. Thus, she pioneered the idea that African Americans could support the costs of their educations as they learned. Anna Cooper developed innovative plans to make this combination of philosophies happen. They were plans taken up for the education of all people in the later widespread movement toward community colleges. She received little recognition for her service, and her views caused public controversy, the loss of her employment, and assaults on her character. African American leaders publicly expressed and implemented widely divergent views about the problems of education for the former slaves. Though white leaders felt less divergent among themselves, they believed they had a stake in the education of black people. They thought it important to become involved. They acted in institutional fashion, guardedly, sometimes tentatively, sometimes defensively. Given the deplorable state of southern education in general and that of Negro education in particular, any improvement would seem desirable, however insufficient it might prove. White businessmen set up several foundations to carry out their ideas. Among prominent white foundations, the Peabody, Slater and Jeans programs donated funds for Negro education, a cause later supported by the Caroline Phelps-Stokes Fund, by the Rosenwald Fund, and more extensively by the General Education Board and The Southern Education Board (Franklin 1974, 277-84). 1 Although the differences between black leaders were apparent, and although white leaders often expressed their views more subtly, white businessmen did lay out some of their concerns. The Reverend A. D. Mayob thought in 1888 that Southern resources could be developed if the working classes were sufficiently educated in the basic, necessary skills. Dexter Hawkins, a New York attorney, hoped that improving education in the South would finally make it possible for the South to bear its share of tax assessments. While black leaders disagreed among themselves about the kinds of programs desirable for black students, white spokesmen generally reached congenial positions. Motives were complex. While some were genuinely charitable, white policy makers agreed that a trained black labor force in the South would be necessary for social equilibrium as for business expansion, and that strictly vocational education for the black population would provide the solution (Franklin 1974, 280). But black male leaders developed and laid out distinctly divergent patterns of thought and action for the education of black youth. 2 The programs they championed produced factions that persist to this day. Yet, in their day, Anna Julia Cooper may have discovered the only practical solutions for the long-term needs of African Americans. In doing so, she became a memorable representative of a distinguished group of black women writers, activists and educators, a group that included Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Mary McLeod Bethune, Lucy Laney, and Mary Church Terrell. Of the black male leaders of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Booker Washington spoke for those African Americans who thought it the first interest of the former slaves to improve economic positions, even though that meant delaying civil rights, delaying the suffrage, sanctioning menial work and, in the end, foregoing higher education. His views were based on the steady deterioration of black opportunity in the South as Reconstruction ended (for divergent interpretations see Coulter 1947; Woodward 1951). Though Washington never openly opposed higher education, his acceptance of separatism and his emphasis on vocational training came to a near exclusion of liberal arts experience from the education of black youth (Franklin 1974, 327-32). Washington supported education geared to the needs of industrialists. He founded an educational institution at Tuskegee to carry out his beliefs. Because of this, Washington exerted a wide influence in black circles and in white circles. Inadvertently or not, it seemed he spoke for those powerful whites who set up the foundations, and who desired a permanent black subservience, those who would benefit from the availability of a laboring, black underclass that would cherish few higher aspirations (Harlan 1972, 254-87; Washington 1988). PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 15 W. E. B. Du Bois demanded higher education for African Americans with no delay and no discrimination; he spoke of a "talented tenth" (Du Bois 1961). 3 By this expression he referred to those black students who were being denied the superior education to which natural gifts should entitle them. In Philadelphia, and later at Atlanta University, he set an example of superb scholarship. 4 In time, Du Bois developed an international focus on black problems in education as in politics. He disagreed sharply with Washington's ideas; he referred to Washington's political activities as "manipulations" of Washington's "Tuskegee Machine." Charles W. Chesnutt never underestimated the importance of opportunity for higher education. He thought, however, that the road to rectifying injustices in education as in other matters lay in insisting neither on vocational education, nor on immediate opportunities in liberal arts institutions. Chesnutt believed the suffrage to be the nearest road to basic civil rights, and therefore to educational advantages. If Negroes possessed the suffrage, Chesnutt believed they could open doors, including the entrances to institutions of higher learning. Chesnutt also came to think, however, that in every aspect of American life, in civil rights as in human rights, equality would finally be achieved through amalgamation of the races. Even though his family made connections at Tuskegee, Chesnutt disagreed with Washington and, to a lesser extent, with Du Bois. Thus he opposed the separatism of Washington and the positions some have called the elitism of Du Bois. Chesnutt thought blacks could achieve equality in education as in life by securing civil rights. The three African American male leaders corresponded extensively with one another about the directions black education should take. They all spoke in public; they published books, articles and essays setting forth their views. They figured prominently in national debates. 5 But in this area of education, Anna Julia Cooper may have found the first, perhaps the only, resolution