Anna J. Cooper House

The only woman quoted in the US passport

Collecting international stamps in a passport is a rite of passage for many adventurous travelers, but the journey of Dr. Anna Julia Cooper is marked in ink before that little blue booklet ever leaves the country. She has the unique honor of being the only woman quoted in the United States passport. The excerpt reads, “The cause of freedom is not the case of a race or a sect or a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”

Her life was defined by mobility. Born the daughter of an enslaved woman, Anna Julia Cooper would become a world traveler and an accomplished educator. Widowed after just two years of marriage, Cooper embraced her life as a public figure and delivered human rights speeches in London and at the Chicago World’s Fair. She would travel to Paris, France to enroll as a student in the prestigious Sorbonne University, where, at the age of 66, she became the fourth Black woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D.

There’s no question why the legacy of this worldly woman is stamped in the United States passport, but her story is also rooted in the neighborhoods of Washington, DC. Anna Julia Cooper shaped the culture of education to benefit the city’s most underserved residents. She earned the role of principal at the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth. In the latter part of her life, she would go on to serve as president of Frelinghuysen University, a night school for working-class adults.

Dr. Cooper lived in this home for nearly 50 years before dying at the age of 105 in 1964, just months before the Civil Rights Act would be signed into law. Her house and the surrounding neighborhood of LeDroit Park were preserved by two women, Theresa Brown and Lauretta Jackson. The home’s porch, admired by many for its elegance, once served as a graduation stage for the night students whom Dr. Anna Julia Cooper taught just inside her home.

Address 201 T Street NW, Washington, DC 20011, www.dcwritershomes.wdchumanities. org/anna-julia-cooper | Getting there Metro to Shaw-Howard University (Green and Yellow Line); bus 90, 92, 96, X3 to Florida Avenue NW & 6th Street NW | Hours

Viewable from the outside only | Tip Admire a nearby mural, painted by 14 international female artists who collaborated in celebration of Women’s History Month. Look for messages like, “Tell Your Her Story,” and “Votes for Women” (73 Florida Avenue NW, www.albuscav.us/womenhistory.html).