Ann Nixon Cooper
By Herb Boyd
Managing Editor, Our World Today
Ann Nixon Cooper gained national attention in 2008 when she was acknowledged by President-Elect Barack Obama during his acceptance speech in Chicago.
Obama cited her phenomenal age, she was 106. Cooper may have been singled out for her longevity but her status in Atlanta where she was involved in numerous civic affairs was widely acclaimed. Cooper, 107, died Monday in Atlanta.
“I attended her 100th birthday party in Atlanta on January 9,” recalled New Yorker and retired teacher Margaretta
Bobo, whose nephew the esteemed sociologist Lawrence Bobo is Cooper’s grandson. “She was doing the electric slide with us and was just as glamorous as ever. She was an amazing woman who still did her own housekeeping.”
Keeping an immaculately clean house was just one of the many talents Cooper possessed, and the moment she arrived in Atlanta in the 1920s, after marriage to Albert Berry Cooper II, now deceased (he died in 1967), she immediately got involved as a social leader and community volunteer.
“She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky, when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons—because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin,” Obama said when informed of her death.
Since her husband was a dentist, Cooper was active with the Georgia Dental Society for many years, and was at one time president of the group. For more than a quarter of a century she was a member of the Board of Directors of Gate City Nursery Association, serving as president of the board and organizing the auxiliary to the board, among other duties and responsibilities.
“Granny was an enormously gracious, poised and engaging person,” said her grandson, Professor Bobo. “She was a woman of rare good spirit and commitment. She always greeted you with a bright smile, a cheerful laugh, and a good word. For so long she was the center and rock of the family. She will be dearly missed.”
It would be an exercise in futility to list even a portion of the organizations and clubs where her tireless commitment deeply respected. But she was very proud of the time she spent tutoring nonreaders in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. and his son were the pastors.
And when you live as long as Cooper did you are automatically a fount of information and this is particularly true of a woman who had a remarkable memory and sense of recall. She was often sought by historians, teachers, and researches interested in knowing the intricate details of Atlanta’s early years.
To complement her lectures and consultancies, she would present her vast collection of memorabilia, including photographs and garments indicative of particular historical periods in Atlanta.
According to the Auburn Avenue Research Library, that Cooper often frequented, she was an active member of the Utopian Literary Club since the late forties, and let her other leadership roles, she was, at one time or another, president, treasurer, and secretary.
Cooper’s autobiography, A Century and Some Change: My Life Before the President Called My Name, written with Karen Grigsby Bates, is scheduled to be released in January by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, in honor of her 108th birthday.
After Obama’s victory, she described it as a “victory of faith over fear” and said she is relieved that things have changed so much in the past century. “After a while, we will all be one, that's what I look forward to.” Cooper is survived most immediately by her daughter, Joyce Nixon Cooper Bobo, and grandchildren Christopher Bobo, an attorney in Los Angeles; and Lawrence Bobo, who teaches at Harvard University.
“She has lots of other grandchildren,” said Professor Bobo, “Kenny, Abby, and Eric Manning, the sons of Gwen Cooper, her oldest daughter and the first to pass; A.B. Cooper IV, Michael, Jeff, and Tony Cooper, children of her son, A.B. Cooper III, who is also deceased; and Gerald, Theresa, Ernest, and Gwen-Joyce Hooper, children of her youngest daughter, Ann Marie Hooper, also deceased. There are too many great grandchildren for me to keep track.” Funeral services are still being arranged.
