A Voice from the South

This is a Boundary Bay Classics edition of the classic essay collection A Voice from the South by Anna Julia Cooper. Divided into two parts, the essays argue for the education and elevation of Black women as central to the progress of the race, and address the higher education of women, the status of women in America, American race relations, and the literary representation of Black Americans. Cooper’s central claim—that only the Black woman can say “when and where I enter… then and there the whole Negro race enters with me”—became a foundational statement of Black feminist thought. First published in 1892, the book is now recognized as one of the earliest full-length works of Black feminist theory and a landmark of African American intellectual history.