EMMA AZALIA SMITH HACKLEY

{with spectacles}
(1867 - 1922)
Concert Soprano, Educator, and Activist
ELIZABETH CARTER BROOKS
(1867 - 1951)
Educator, Architect, and Activist

Emma Azalia Smith Hackley was an African American singer and political activist based in Denver, Colorado. She was a child prodigy learning to play the piano at three, as well as taking private voice, violin, and French lessons. In 1900 Hackley received her music degree from Denver University, and in 1905-1906 studied voice in Paris with a former Metropolitan Opera star. Active in Denver’s Black education, civic, and social life, Hackley worked as an elementary school teacher for eighteen years, founded the Colored Women’s League, and served as executive director of its local branch. Despite her stellar training, Hackley did not pursue a professional career. Instead she spent much of the rest of her life training a younger generation of singers such as Marian Anderson. Hackley published her own collection of music entitled Colored Girl Beautiful. Later she turned her attention to African American folk music and organized the Folk Songs Festivals movement in Black schools and churches across the South.

In her work as educator, social activist, and architect, equality was the vision of Elizabeth Carter Brooks. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts to a formerly enslaved mother, Brooks graduated from New Bedford High School and then continued her education in architecture at the Swain Free School of Design. She went on to study at New Bedford’s Harrington Normal School for Teachers, where she became its first African American graduate. In 1901 Brooks became the first Black woman hired as a public-school teacher in New Bedford.

Her work in the Black women’s club movement, in architecture, and in real estate development were grounded in her social activism. She helped form the Northeastern Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, founded the New Bedford Home for the Aged, and designed its permanent home on Chancery Street. Through her teaching, organizing and building, Elizabeth Carter Brooks enriched the lives of New Bedford’s students, elderly, and people of color.

ANNA JULIA COOPER

(1858 - 1964)

Author, Educator, Sociologist, Orator, and Black Equality and Women’s Rights Activist

Of special note, Cooper remains to be one of the most prominent African American scholars in US history.

Anna Julia Haywood Cooper was born enslaved in Raleigh, North Carolina. She attended Oberlin College, Ohio on a scholarship, earning a bachelor’s in 1884 and a master’s degree in mathematics in 1887. After graduation, Cooper worked at Wilberforce University and Saint Augustine’s before moving to Washington, DC to teach at Washington Colored High School.

In 1892 she published her first book, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South. In addition to calling for equal education for women, the book advanced Cooper’s assertion that educated African American women were necessary for uplifting the entire Black race. The book of essays gained national attention, and Cooper began lecturing across the country on topics such as education, civil rights, and the status of Black women.

Cooper also established and co-founded several organizations to promote Black civil rights causes. Before 1946, the YWCA and YMCA did not accept African American members. As a result, Cooper created “colored” branches to provide support for young Black migrants moving from the South to Washington, DC.