A Voice from the South

One of the founding texts of Black feminist thought, this 1892 collection gathers eight essays by an educator who was born enslaved and lived to earn a doctorate from the Sorbonne. Anna Julia Cooper argues that the progress of African Americans depends on the education and dignity of Black women, whose voices she places at the moral center of the nation’s future. Writing with wit and force, she takes on white feminists who ignored race, Black men who overlooked gender, and a church that failed both. Her insistence that when and where she enters, the whole race enters with her became a rallying phrase for later generations. It remains a cornerstone of American intellectual history. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.