User:Omotayo Akingba/African-American literature

Anna Julia Cooper
Anna Julia Cooper in her book from 1892 titled a A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South argued for greater and more widespread attainment of higher education for African Americans, especially women. Her work attempts to cultivate a sense of educational rigor in African American female intellectuals and the black community in the US would benefit from as a whole. This is to counter the overly aggressive and male dominated academic writings in higher education and balance them with more female voices, hence Cooper is widely recognized as the "mother of Black feminism". Furthermore, Cooper did not just see higher education as a way to improve the socioeconomic situation of African American communities, but also as a foundation for the continuous learning and a community based approach to upliftment that would cause the "universal betterment" of people and humanity as a whole. Cooper advocated for the democratization of both public and private higher education which has been seen as "bastions of white, male elitism" and a "focus on reproducing English culture and cementing Christian doctrine", as the changing nature of American culture that now grapples with centuries of relegating women and racial minorities to the lowest rungs of society.