Delighted to see a page about Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) in this month’s Perspectives on History (magazine of the American Historical Association, now very ably edited by a former student, Leland Grigoli). I cherished Dr. Cooper’s 1925 edition of the 12th-century chanson de geste “Le pèlerinage de Charlemagne” (“The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne”) for years before knowing anything about her.
Born into slavery, she is the first African American woman to receive a PhD in history — which she did from the Sorbonne, at age 67, in the middle of a long, distinguished career as an educator: she lived to the age of 105. I think of her as a medievalist, but her previous degrees were in math, and her doctoral dissertation was on French attitudes towards slavery in the 18th century.
Through the family of her enslavers — specifically, one of the two Haywood brothers who have been suggested as candidates for her paternity — a line could traditionally be traced from Dr. Cooper to Charlemagne through alleged gateway ancestor Ensign Thomas Savage (d. by 1633) of Accomack Co., Virginia. He had been supposed to have descended from a gentry Savage family with known baronial and royal ancestry — but there is no evidence to support this old guess. Nevertheless, Dr. Cooper’s own descent from Charlemagne is a statistical certainty.
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