An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted on 03/01/2026,
Women's History Month 2026
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Continuing into Women's History Month with my ongoing theme of heroic journalism, today I want you all to go look up the life and accomplishments of Marvel Cooke --a name you almost certainly haven't heard of. Born in 1901 Mankaton, Minnesota and raised in Minneapolis, Marvel's father Madison Jackson was himself a lawyer --in fact the very first Black graduate of Ohio State University law school, though unable to practice due to racial discrimination. Her mother Amy Wood Jackson had been a teacher on a South Dakota Native American reservation and was only too aware of the appalling living conditions that were supposed to be accepted as normal. With this kind of upbringing and background, a lifelong commitment to pushing back against injustice was probably inevitable. A deeply creative person as well as practical, Marvel was the first Black student to enroll at her elementary school and was the first Black student to graduate her high school. She later graduated from the University of Minnesota (one among the first five Black people to ever do so, that semester), but an altercation with a college friend who conspicuously pretended not to know her due to her race, convinced her to move elsewhere and start over, and in 1926 she resettled in Harlem, New York City -- at nearly the apex of the Harlem Renaissance.
Marvel's first job in New York was as a general assignment reporter with W. E. B. DuBois's The Crisis (see Lesson #1 in this series), but she also worked as an editorial secretary with the Amsterdam News, a black-owned newspaper. While there, she helped organize the first-ever union for a Black-owned newspaper, and even led an 11-week strike. For a time she and her new husband Cecil Cooke (a renowned athlete) lived in Greensboro, NC where she worked as a teacher at the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, but they eventually moved back to New York City and she returned to journalism as an assistant managing editor at the Harlem-based People's Voice. She also worked for The Daily Compass, making her the first Black woman journalist to be employed by a white-owned newspaper.
Cooke's pieces generally examined the conditions of working-class Black women, always with the hopeful goal of galvanizing change. In 1935, she was named as Director of the Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, which she would later recount as the happiest time of her life. That same year she collaborated with civil rights leader Ella Baker (see lesson #53 in this series) on a unapologetic series titled The Bronx Slave Markets, shining a light upon the exploitation of Black domestic workers. During this era she also became a member of the Communist Party, which of course put her in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's crosshairs --twice in 1954 she testified before the notorious House Unamerican Activities Committee due to her political beliefs. Undeterred, she continued in her activism as the national legal defense secretary for Angela Davis in the late 60's, and later served as national vice chairman of the American-Soviet Friendship Committee. She died in her beloved Harlem at the amazing age of 99, still working on articles for New World Review.
Collected Washington Press Club Interviews with Marvel Cooke at:
https://wpcf.org/interviewees/marvel-cooke
Next lesson - Watch this space