Grades 7–12 | Aurora Homeschool Academy · BleuLearn Curriculum
This volume documents: Documented Black women's intellectual, legal, and political contributions — Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" (1851), Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South (1892), and Pauli Murray's 1944 legal memorandum that became the foundational argument for Brown v. Board of Education. These women were not exceptions. They were the architects. Their documented work changed American law and letters — and was routinely left out of both the women's rights movement and the civil rights movement.
Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964): Born enslaved. Earned a PhD from the Sorbonne (Paris) at age 67 — one of the first Black women to do so. Educator, activist, author. A Voice from the South (1892) is one of the earliest documented arguments for Black feminism and intersectionality. Available free at Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org).
Pauli Murray (1910–1985): Black woman lawyer, poet, activist, and the first Black person to earn a JSD (Doctor of Juridical Science) from Yale. Her 1944 memorandum arguing that "separate but equal" was inherently unequal directly influenced Thurgood Marshall's strategy in Brown v. Board. She later co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and became the first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.
Primary Source 1
The Document Says
Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South, 1892
Anna Julia Cooper Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University. Available at Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). Free.
"The colored woman of to-day occupies a unique position in this country. She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem, and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both."
Primary Source 2
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?", Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, 1851
Published in Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851. Available at the National Archives and Library of Congress.
"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?"
Apply the Four Questions — Anna Julia Cooper
The Four Questions: (1) Who wrote it? (2) When? (3) What does it say? (4) Why does it matter? Use specific words from the document in every answer.
Q1 — Who wrote it? Born enslaved in 1858, earned a PhD from the Sorbonne at age 65. What was her documented position in Black American intellectual life in 1892? What made her qualified — and made it unusual — for a Black woman to publish a book of this kind in 1892?
Q2 — When? 1892 — 27 years after the Civil War, three years before Plessy v. Ferguson. What was the documented political context for Black women in 1892? What movements existed, and what was their documented relationship to Black women?
Q3 — What does it say? Cooper says Black women face "both a woman question and a race problem." What documented movements existed for each in 1892? What was their documented relationship to Black women? What does "unknown or unacknowledged" mean as a documented political condition?
Q4 — Why does it matter? Cooper identifies Black women as "unknown or unacknowledged." What does that documented invisibility in both movements of 1892 document about whose voices are centered in political history? How does this connect to Sojourner Truth's challenge 41 years earlier?
Cross-source analysis
Both Cooper (1892) and Truth (1851) document the same condition. What exact documented argument do they share? Write two sentences identifying the through-line between both sources:
Claim–Evidence–Warrant
Write one paragraph: Make a claim about Black women's documented contributions to American civil rights and intellectual history. Cite both Cooper and Truth as evidence. Explain the documented connection to contemporary intersectionality (warrant).
BleuLearn Pause
What does this primary source document that a textbook's description of the same event would not?
Archive Assignment
Access Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.org). Find A Voice from the South by Anna Julia Cooper. Read the first chapter, "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race." Write one additional sentence not in the excerpt above and apply Question 3: