¹ Cooper lived from 1858 to 1964. Du Bois lived from 1868 to 1963. This essay will examine Cooper's and Du Bois's educational ideas between the years 1892 and 1940, but is structured thematically rather than chronologically to capture the continuities in and breadth of their thinking. Cooper articulated most of her educational ideas between 1886 and 1940. I use the date 1892 as a starting point because her ideas were initially presented to the world in her book A Voice from the South, published in 1892. Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Cooper retired from her job as president of Frelinghuysen University in Washington, DC, in 1941, but remained active in education circles in the city. Du Bois's educational ideas became well known with his publication of The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., New York: Bantam Books, 1989). He published his most substantive essays on education by 1940. Many of Du Bois's pre-1940 essays are found in Herbert Aptheker, ed., The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906–1960 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); and Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., ed., Du Bois on Education (New York: AltaMira Press, 2002). Like Cooper, Du Bois continued to write about education until his death in 1963. After 1940, however, Du Bois focused much of his work on global and peace issues.Google Scholar

² See Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948); and Wilson J. Moses, Creative Conflict in African American Thought: Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

³ Cooper and Du Bois were prolific in giving speeches and writing essays about education. Cooper lived to be 105 years old and Du Bois to 95 years old. This essay is not an exhaustive analysis of either their thinking over their lifetimes or of the time period under study. Instead, I illuminate and contrast some of the key ideas about the education of black people that these two major black educators developed from 1892 until 1940. For a more comprehensive examination of Cooper's educational ideas, see Karen Johnson, Uplifting the Women and the Race: The Educational Philosophies and Social Activism of Anna Julia Cooper and Nannie Helen Burroughs (New York: Garland Publishing Co., 2000); Cathryn Bailey, “Anna Julia Cooper: Dedicated in the Name of My Slave Mother to the Education of Colored Working People.” Hypatia 19, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 56–73; and Vivian May, Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2007). For a more comprehensive examination of Du Bois's educational thought, see Derrick P. Alridge, “Guiding Philosophical Principles for a Du Boisian-Based African American Educational Model.” Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 182–199; Derrick P. Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education: Toward a Model for African-American Education.” Educational Theory 49, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 359–379.Google Scholar

⁴ With the exception of a few essays and biographies of individual educators, there is a paucity of comparative intellectual historical analyses of African American educational thought. However, an informative essay on Du Bois and African American women educators is Cally L. Waite's “Du Bois and the Invisible Talented Tenth,” in Feminist Engagements: Reading, Resisting, and Revisioning Male Theorists in Education and Cultural Studies, ed. Kathleen Weiler (New York: Routledge, 2001), 33–45.Google Scholar

⁵ See Mabel Collins Donnelly, The American Victorian Woman: The Myth and the Reality (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 21–33; Joan N. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books, 1980), 118.Google Scholar

⁶ Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood, 11–30.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁸ See Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 23–31; Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood, 30–47 and Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar

⁹ See, for example, Harper's Weekly: Journal of Civilization, vol. 23, September 13, 1879. The famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew the pictures for the September issue and many other issues of Harper's Weekly. Nast's cartoons illuminated the stereotypical images of blacks and immigrants. Nast, however, favored and believed in the assimilation of blacks, Chinese, and other immigrants into American society.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ It is important to note that the Greeks and Romans did not necessarily attribute barbarism to peoples of darker races. In fact, race as conceptualized today is a modern phenomenon. See Frank M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); and Lloyd A. Thompson, Romans and Blacks (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989).Google Scholar

¹² Tacitus, Germania, trans. J. B. Rives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 78.Google Scholar

¹³ See Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978) and Immanuel Kant, “On the Different Races of Man” in Race and Enlightenment: A Reader, ed. Emmanuel C. Eze (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Inc., 1997), 38–64; John Stuart Mill, “Civilization,” in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. 18, Essays on Politics and Society, ed. John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). Also, see Don Asher Habibi, John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 194–95.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Roy Harvey Pearce, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind (1953; repr., Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1967). Also, see Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, ed. Joseph Carroll (Petersborough: Broadview Press, 2003).Google Scholar

¹⁶ See Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; and Pearce, Savagism and Civilization.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For a thorough discussion of civilization, see Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1927). As quoted in Nancy F. Cott, “Two Beards: Coauthorship and the Concept of Civilization.” American Quarterly 42, no. 2 (June, 1990): 284.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 23.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Gordon, Lynn D., Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 3. Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Movement, 1900–1915 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 1–15. Historian Michael McGerr offers a similar definition of Progressivism to the ones offered by Gordon and Hofstadter. According to McGerr, Progressivism was a middle-class movement that promoted social reform and change in society through industry, efficiency, and technology. McGerr also praises Progressives’ effort to address the moral issues of their day. See Michael E. McGerr, Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid., 34–36. For varied discussions on the American Progressive education movement, see Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961); Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935); Joel H. Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972); William J. Reese, Power and Promise of School Reform: Grass-Roots Movements during the Progressive Era (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986); and Clarence J. Karier, The Individual, Society, and Education: A History of American Educational Ideas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).Google Scholar

²¹ See Fredrickson, George, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (1971; repr., Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 313–14. For an excellent discussion of Franklin Giddings, see Watkins, William, The White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1915 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 62–80. For firsthand accounts of Giddings's ideas on race, see Giddings, Franklin H., The Principles of Sociology: An Analysis of the Phenomena of Association and of Social Organization (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1896) and Studies in the Theory of Human Society (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1922).Google Scholar

²² For example, early in his career, Du Bois, like some other Progressives, challenged unbridled capitalism and individualism as the reason that the poor continued to be exploited. He also accepted a concept of cultural advancement in which he believed American blacks could move up the ladder of cultural progress. The tension, however, in adopting this progressive framework was that Progressives often ignored issues of race, sometimes promoted prevailing notions of Negro inferiority, and were not concerned with the immediate civil rights of Negroes. These tensions later moved Du Bois away from some aspects of traditional Progressivism. See Schafer, Axel R., “W.E.B. Du Bois, German Social Thought, and the Racial Divide in American Progressivism, 1892–1909.” Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (December 2001): 925–949.Google Scholar

²³ I use the term Negro in referring to African Americans and blacks periodically throughout this essay to provide a sense of historical context. The term was used interchangeably in the United States in reference to blacks until the late 1960s. For a discussion of the term, see Berry, Mary Francis and Blassingame, John, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 380–396.Google Scholar

²⁴ See Bederman, , Manliness and Civilization, 23. Wilson Moses argues that nineteenth-century African Americans were obsessed with the ideas of decay and progress and that black writers discussed progress as an upward path toward a more advanced state of being for blacks. Moses goes on to define “Civilizationism” as the belief that the road of progress led to a higher social status for community or group existence. For an excellent discussion of these ideas, see Moses’ chapter “Progress, Providence, and Civilizationism” in Afrotopia, 96–135.Google Scholar

²⁵ Cooper, Anna Julia, “Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Rejuvenation of a Race,” in A Voice from the South, 9–47.Google Scholar

²⁶ Cooper, A Voice from the South, 53–71. Cooper's speech was likely influenced by a speech given by her mentor, the Cambridge-educated minister Alexander Crummell. See Crummell, Alexander, “The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs,” in Civilization and Black Progress: Selected Writings of Alexander Crummell on the South, ed. Oldfield, J. R. (Charlottesville: Virginia University Press, 1995), 101–113. Crummell espoused a doctrine of Christian Progressivism in which God bestowed civilization on those who abided by divine law. Also see, Moses, Afrotopia, 98, 102.Google Scholar

²⁷ Cooper, “Womanhood,” in Cooper, A Voice from the South, 25.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., 73.Google Scholar

²⁹ Cooper believed that slavery had hindered Negro progress. She stated, “True progress is never made by spasms. Real progress is growth. It must begin in the seed. … There is something to encourage and inspire us in the advancement of individuals since their emancipation from slavery. It at least proves that there is nothing irretrievably wrong in the shape of the black man's skull, and that under given circumstances his development, downward or upward, will be similar to that of other average human beings.” Cooper, A Voice from the South, 25–26. For a discussion of other black women and the context of Victorian idealism, see Perkins, Linda, “The Impact of the “Cult of True Womanhood” on the Education of Black Women.” Journal of Social Issues 39, no. 3 (1983): 17–28 and Carlson, Shirley J., “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era.” Journal of Negro History 77, no. 2 (Spring, 1992): 61–73 For an analysis of black women, language, and race, see Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, “African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race.” Signs 17, no. 2 (Winter, 1992): 251–274.Google Scholar

³⁰ Bois, Du cited Cooper's words from A Voice from the South when he stated in 1920, “Only the black woman can say ‘when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.’” See Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Damnation of Women,” in W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. Lewis, David Levering (1897; repr., New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995), 304–05.Google Scholar

³¹ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Conservation of Races,” in W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader, 23. During the early 1900s, Du Bois developed ideas about progress and civilization in which blacks would progress to civilization in stages. See Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Development of a People.” International Journal of Ethics 14, (1904): 292–311 For an excellent discussion of Du Bois's early ideas on progress and civilization, see Stewart, James B., “In Search of a Theory of Human History: W.E.B. Du Bois's Theory of Social and Cultural Dynamics,” in W.E.B. Du Bois: On Race and Culture, eds. Bell, Bernard W., Grosholz, Emily R., and Stewart, James B. (New York: Routledge, 1996), 261–288.Google Scholar

³² Bois, Du, “The Conservation of Races.”Google Scholar

³³ Bois, Du, “The Conservation of Races,” 27. Also see, Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Talented Tenth,” in The Negro Problem, eds. Booker, T. Washington et al. (New York: James Pott and Company, 1903), 33.Google Scholar

³⁴ It is important, however, to note that Du Bois also advocated gender-specific roles for black women as mothers, nurturers, and homemakers. Such a view was consistent with that of other men, and some women, of the era. Even Cooper, as I have pointed out in this essay, preached maternal gender-specific roles for women. For a detailed discussion by Bois, Du on the matter, see Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Work of Negro Women in Society,” Spelman Messenger 18, no. 5, 1902 February, folder 14, box 16, Du Bois Collection, Fisk University Archives, Nashville, TN. (Hereafter cited as Du Bois Collection).Google Scholar

³⁵ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Work of Negro Women in Society,” 1.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid.Google Scholar

³⁷ Cooper, Anna Julia, “They Also,” in Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Moreland-Spingarn Research Center (Washington, DC: Howard University, n.d.), folder 55, box 23–4. (Hereafter cited as AJC Papers.) While there are no dates on the several drafts of this poem in her papers, Cooper signed her name on the bottom of one draft and listed her address as 786 Clark Ave., Jefferson City, Missouri, which indicates that the poem was likely written during her five years at Lincoln University, 1906–11.Google Scholar

³⁸ Hutchinson, Louise D., Anna J. Cooper: A Voice from the South, 51–52.Google Scholar

³⁹ See Carlson, , “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era,” 61–73.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See Bois, W.E.B. Du, “Bismarck.” Commencement Speech Delivered at Fisk University, 1888 June, frame 1, reel 80, The Papers of W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst, MA (Hereafter cited as Du Bois Papers). Also, see Bois, W.E.B. Du, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of the First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 126.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization, Commencement Pact, 1890,” 1890 June, p. 1, frame 15, reel 80, Du Bois Papers. Google Scholar

⁴² See Bois, W.E.B. Du, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; repr., New York: Schocken Books, 1967).Google Scholar

⁴³ See, for example, Bois, W.E.B. Du, The Negro Common School (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1901). The Negro Common School examined the inequities in funding provided for the education of blacks compared to whites. In particular, Du Bois was concerned with funding inequities between black and white schools, per pupil expenditure for black versus white students, and illiteracy among blacks.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Bois, W.E.B. Du, The College Bred Negro (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1900); The Negro Common School; Bois, W.E.B. Du and Dill, Augustus Granville, The College Bred Negro American (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1910); and Bois, W.E.B. Du, The Common School and the American Negro (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1911).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Cooper, Anna Julia, “The Ethics of the Negro Question.” Delivered at the biennial Session of Friends’ General Conference at Ashbury Park, NJ, 5 September 1902, folder 32, box 23–4, AJC Papers.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Study of Negro Problems.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 11, (January 1898): 8.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Cooper, Anna Julia, “On Education,” 4, n.d., folder 33, box 23–4, AJC Papers. The date of this document is uncertain. I agree, however, with Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan's argument that this essay or speech was likely written during the 1930s, mainly because it is consistent in tone and language with her other essays reconciling the debate over vocational and classical education during this period.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Ibid., 9–10.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Cooper's support for vocational education as part of her larger educational philosophy also reflected the thinking of other black women educators of her time, such as Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Fanny Jackson Coppin. Historian Linda Perkins notes, for example, that as the principal of the Institute of Colored Youth, Fanny Jackson Coppin established an Industrial Department to help meet the needs of the broad spectrum of blacks who sought to acquire skills for making a living and building up the black community. Nevertheless, Coppin also remained committed to classical education and training in advanced technological professions, such as engineering, as the optimal educational strategy for uplifting the race. Cooper, much like Coppin, particularly recognized the necessity of industrial or vocational education for black adults who needed a vocation for making a living. Cooper's speech, therefore, must also be considered within the context of her time and the discourses prevalent among black women educators of the day. See Perkins, Linda M., “Heed Life's Demands: The Educational Philosophy of Fanny Jackson Coppin.” Journal of Negro Education 51, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 181–189.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Biographical Data, “Data desired relative to Group B examination, December 17, 1921,” 17 December, 1921, p.3, folder 1, box 1, AJC Papers, Dramatics was a course or course of study that used plays and acting as a means of introducing students to literature, philosophy, ideals, morality, and ethics in American society and culture. As a humanist and playwright, Cooper saw much value in using dramatics as a means of introducing black children to ideals of western civilization and culture. For a description of high school dramatics written during Cooper's early years as an educator, see Abbott, Alan, “High-School Dramatics.” The School Review 17, no. 2 (February 1909): 119–125.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Cooper's advocacy of a liberal arts curriculum at M Street, however, put her at odds with Washington, DC, school officials during the early 1900s, and her success in helping send a number of M Street students to liberal arts colleges such as Harvard and Yale likely alienated her from supporters of Washington, Booker T. Such success and controversy caused her to resign from M Street High School in 1906. See Washington, Mary Helen, “Introduction,” in Cooper, A Voice from the South, xxxiii-xxxviii.Google Scholar

⁵² Cooper, “Modern Edu.” n.d., p. 6, folder 34, box 23–4, AJC Papers. This unpublished article was handwritten by Cooper on United States Senate stationery. Based on the references to world events in this essay and Cooper's reference to Becker, C. H. as the former Prussian Minister of Education, Cooper's essay was definitely written after 1930, but probably during the 1930s because Becker served as secretary of education from 1925 to 1930. Moreover, the tone of the essay is strikingly similar to her essay “On Education,” which was likely written in the 1930s.Google Scholar

⁵³ Cooper, Anna Julia, “The Humor of Teaching.” The Crisis 37, no. 10 (November 1930): 393–394.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Over the past several decades, scholars have reconsidered Washington's educational thought. Some have argued that his agenda helped provide the South with an unskilled and semi-skilled black labor source. Yet, others have argued that Washington's educational philosophy was in the Progressive and pragmatic tradition of John Dewey and provided for greater equality for the race. I tend to believe that Washington's educational philosophy lies somewhere between these positions. In an interview with Washington's granddaughter, she provided even greater insight about his educational philosophy. She stated that Washington was a realist who believed that blacks, only a few decades removed from slavery, needed practical education to help them make a living, but that he was not entirely opposed to liberal arts education. See Washington, Margaret Clifford, Interview with the author, May 4, 2004. For further discussions of Washington's views, see Harlan, Louis R., Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Harlan, Louis R., Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); and August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1963).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “A Rational System of Negro Education,” p. 2, n.d., folder 11, box 15, Du Bois Collection. While there is no conclusive date to be found on this essay, the dates 1897–1900 appear in the upper right corner.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Talented Tenth,” p. 63.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Development of a People.” International Journal of Ethics 14, (1904): 307.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid., 309–310.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “Education and Work.” Journal of Negro Education 1, 1 (April 1932): 70.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Revelation of Saint Orgne the Damned,” in The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906–1960, ed. Aptheker, Herbert (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 109.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Cooper, Anna Julia, “Simon of Cyrene,” n.d., folder 53, box 23–4, AJC Papers. Google Scholar

⁶² Cooper, Anna Julia, “From Servitude to Service: The Contribution from the Negro Peoples to American History, A Pageant in Three Episodes and Fourteen Scenes,” n.d., box 23–4, folder 43, AJC Papers. While there is no date for this play, the program specifies that it was written during Cooper's tenure at Frelinghuysen.Google Scholar

⁶³ See Cooper, Anna Julia, Slavery and the French Revolutionists (1788–1805), trans. Francis Richardson Keller (1925; repr. Lewistown, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988). Also see James, C. L. R., The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1963; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1989); Bois, W.E.B. Du, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 (1896; repr., Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Cooper, Anna Julia to Bois, W.E.B. Du, 31 December 1929, frame 974, reel 29, Du Bois Papers.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ See Bois, W.E.B. Du, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935; repr., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).Google Scholar

⁶⁶ See Bois, W.E.B. Du, Suppression; The Quest of the Silver Fleece: A Novel (1911; repr., College Park, MD: McGrath Publishing Company, 1969); The Negro (1915; repr., New York: Humanity Books, 2002); John Brown (1909; repr., New York: International Publishers, 1962); Black Folk Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race (1939; repr., New York: Octagon Books); and Bois, W.E.B. Du and Johnson, Guy B., Encyclopedia of the Negro: Preparatory Volume with Reference Lists and Reports (New York: Phelps-Stokes Fund Inc., 1946). Du Bois used the term “Afro-centric” as early as 1961 to describe his historical and educational perspective. See Bois, W.E.B. Du, “Provisional Draft: Not for General Distribution; Proposed Plans for an Encyclopedia Africana,” Rare Books Room: Pennsylvania State University, 1961. Also see “For Cooperation toward an Encyclopedia Africana, Info. Report #2, Accra, Ghana” (September 1962). For further discussion of Du Bois and his “Afro-centric” perspective, see Moses, Afrotopia, Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education,” 359–379; Rath, Richard Cullen, “Echo and Narcissus: The Afrocentric Pragmatism of W.E.B. Du Bois.” Journal of American History 84, no. 2 (September 1997): 461–495.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ See, for instance, the cover of the March 1911 issue of The Crisis, which portrays a Black Egyptian “Ra-Maat-Neb.” The Crisis 1, no. 5 (March, 1911). Also, see Rath, “Echo and Narcissus,” 464–65.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ While it would be anachronistic to label Cooper and Du Bois as Afrocentrists in a contemporary sense—even though Du Bois used the term “Afro-centric”—they did advocate an historical approach to teaching black history that attempted to elevate the image of blacks in U.S. history to the level of the white race.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Cooper, Anna Julia, The Social Settlement: What It Is, and What It Does (Washington, DC: Murray Brothers Press, 1913), 15.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Ibid., 15.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Cooper, Anna Julia, “The Frelinghuysen Aim,” in Second Decennial Catalogue of Frelinghuysen University: A Group of Schools for Employed Colored Persons (Washington, DC: Frelinghuysen University, n.d.), series H, box 23–10, AJC Papers. Google Scholar

⁷² See Bois, W.E.B. Du, “The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study.” U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin, no. 14 (January 1898): 17–18 and “The Upbuilding of Black Durham: The Success of Negroes and Their Value to a Tolerant and Helpful Southern City.” The World's Work 3, (January 1912): 334–335 Also see Marco, Joseph De, “The Rationale and Foundation of Du Bois's Theory of Economic Cooperation.” Phylon 35, no. 1 (March 1974): 5–15.Google Scholar

⁷³ Bois, Du, “Education and Work,” 84.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Bois, Du, “The Field and Function of the Negro College,” in The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906–1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York; Monthly Review Press, 1973), 94–96.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ See Evans, Stephanie Y., Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850–1954: An Intellectual History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007); Bailey, “Anna Julia Cooper,”; Johnson, Uplifting the Women and the Race. Alridge, Derrick P., “W.E.B. Du Bois: ‘Race Man,’ Teacher, and Educational Theorist,” in They Led by Teaching, eds. Field, Sherry L. and Berson, Michael J. (Indianapolis: Kappa Delta Pi, 2003).Google Scholar