CHAPTER XLIX.
MRS. A. J. COOPER.
If we should be asked to-day to name the greatest female educator the race has produced in North Carolina, we would be most certain to mention that one that marks the beginning of this chapter. She is not only the greatest that we know of as a North Carolinian of color, but she is possibly the peer of any the State has produced, of whom we have any account, as a female educator in either race.
Our more favored neighbors can well boast of many good and eminent women, such as Lydia H. Sigourney, Alice Carey and Phoebe Carey, etc., but they all came through only a part of the great storm that negro women of eminence have to contend with. It is simply remarkable, when one contrasts the two roads leading to eminence, to behold the difference.
In the pathway along which negro wonien have to travel may be found almost every conceivable difficulty to be overcome alone by the traveler; from poverty, through humiliation (even upon public thoroughfares), to almost a sacrifice of friends and life. A long, up-hill and lonesome journey, and therefore the more remarkable, especially in the South, when compared with the easy pathway of our more favored sisters. When an Afro-American woman dees arrive at any eminence it is well known that she has fought a fierce and bloody battle almost every step of her way. Despite all the opposition
