In her 1892 masterpiece, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South, scholar Anna Julia Cooper wrote, “Only the Black woman can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Just a generation removed from slavery, Cooper—who is often called “the Mother of Black Feminism”—understood that the progress of African Americans, and of American civilization, is impossible without Black women.