Anna J. Cooper in the Mail
One of LeDroit Park’s notable residents was featured on a stamp in June. Our very own Anna J. Cooper (1858 – 1964) lived at the veranda-lined house at Second and T Streets. The circle at Third and T Streets was named in her honor.
Ms. Cooper is most famous for her book A Voice from the South, considered a foundational text in black feminism and published while she was the principal of the M Street High School (now called Dunbar High School). She then moved on to teach night classes for black Washingtonians at Frelinghuysen University, which was located in her house for a time. She received a PhD at the Sorbonne in 1924, making her among the first black American women to receive a doctorate.
If you have a newer U.S. passport, you may notice that she is quoted on pages 26-7: “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class— it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”
Get a sheet of her stamps and send a little piece of your neighborhood’s history whenever you send a letter.
Great post! So much history in our little enclave of LeDroit Park. I never knew there was a stamp to honor her.
[…] researching topics for my tour I came across a 1995 postage stamp commemorating him. This makes him the first of two LeDroit Park residents featured on postage […]