Anna Julia Cooper (1858 - 1964) was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, and Black liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African-American scholars in United States history.

Shirley Moody-Turner (editor) is an associate professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University. Through a Center for Humanities and Information grant, she helped support the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in digitizing the Anna Julia Cooper papers. She is currently the editor for African American Literature in Transition 1900-1910 (Cambridge University Press).