Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Printing House, 1892. First edition. 8vo. (vi), iii, (iii), (9)-304 pp.; lacking frontispiece portrait. Publisher's maroon and tan cloth-covered boards, stamped in gilt, boards rubbed and spotted; top edge gilt, other edges trimmed; patterned endpapers; ownership inscription of Black attorney Fountain Peyton on front paste-down, dated 1896; hinges repaired; text leaves toned, as usual; scattered light wear along text edges; scattered light soiling to text. Library Company of Philadelphia, Afro-Americana 2699; Blockson 4288

Rare first edition of Black educator and activist Anna Julia Cooper's first book, a groundbreaking work on race relations and gender inequality in the United States.

Born into slavery in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1858, Cooper was educated at Saint Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, where at a young age she fought for her right to take courses typically reserved for men. She later enrolled at Oberlin College, where she earned a master's degree in mathematics--one of the first Black women to graduate from the school and one of the first Black women in the United States to earn a master's degree. In the late 1880s she moved to Washington, D.C., where she helped establish the Colored Women's League and the Colored Settlement House, and taught mathematics and science at the M Street High School. Upon becoming principal of the school she spearheaded a progressive educational curriculum and raised the quality of the school's education, with many of her students being accepted at Ivy League schools and HBCUs. She later taught at the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri, and earned a doctorate from the Sorbonne, in 1924. As an activist and public speaker, Cooper advocated for better education and housing for the Black community, and through her speeches and published work provided an early Black feminist critique of American society during the height of Jim Crow.

Fountain Peyton (1861-1951) was one of the first Black attorneys in Washington, D.C. Born into slavery, during the Civil War he and his mother escaped to Washington, D.C., where he was educated at Wayland Seminary, and then at Howard University. Graduating with a law degree he opened a practice in Washington (one of the first three Black attorneys in the city at that time), and was the first Black lawyer to argue a case in the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. He later became the first Black Examiner in Chancery for Washington, and was appointed to the city’s School Board in 1915, and in 1918 became its chairman.

A near-fine copy of this early Black feminist work.