ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Dr. Walter Cooper had always grown up hearing the stories of his great grandfather who was born into slavery in Georgia.
"He was the offspring of a plantation owner who had taken a purchase of a woman off of a slave market in Alabama and brought her to Henson, Florida," civil rights activist Dr. Walter Cooper said. "He was forbidden to learn how to read, write and comprehend."
Growing up in the late 1920s in Pennsylvania, Cooper and his siblings slept in pull-out beds in the kitchen for most of his childhood. His father worked as a coal miner and his mother had always pushed her children for a better life, heavily emphasizing the importance of reading.
"My siblings, we lived in the library, as poor as we were, we had a library," Cooper said. "We had an unabridged dictionary as early as 1948."
Book after book, a new world had opened up to Cooper. As he discovered readings about Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver, he became inspired.
"In 1943, playing football, one-third of the squad was Black," Cooper said. "There were four girls who wanted to be cheerleaders. They happened to be of color. And so after we won four straight games, I got all the Black football players together. And I said, 'we're going to boycott practice.' You could hear the coach, Nobby Hartman, going up and down the corridors saying ‘I don't care what they want give it to them.’ That broke the barrier of Black girls not being cheerleaders."
Continuing to pursue higher education at the University of Rochester, Cooper met his wife Helen Louise Claytor, the first Black woman to work at Eastman Kodak company in the research lab. The newlywed couple faced many setbacks, like when no one would rent to them. But in 1958, the Coopers became the first Black family to move to Henrietta.
"One of the neighbors," Cooper said, "they had a young child who was Greg who was very interested in people of color, and the family moved out. They didn't want to be around Black neighbors."
Seeing how Dr. Cooper’s mother had valued education, Cooper knew he could do the same for others. From going to the White House with Jackie Robinson to starting up the organization Urban League of Rochester, Dr. Cooper now continues to share his story in the classroom and online, through resources like the Resistance Mapping project. for his legacy to live on forever.
"My mother’s thing was the book shall set you free," Cooper said. "We had no money, but we had an interest in knowledge, knowing yourself and knowing where you lived, the environment in which you have to know to survive. Then thyself presume not God does. For the study of mankind is a man."
