President-elect Obama told throngs of people in Chicago’s Grant Park and millions watching on TV and the Internet, “This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.”
Tuesday night, Obama spoke about Cooper for more than a minute, chronicling several of the historic events that have occurred during her 106 years. Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
There is an Ann Nixon Cooper Collection at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System’s Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History. The collection contains items from 1922 to 1956, including a daybook, two scrapbooks and other personal effects from the Coopers, according to the Digital Library of Georgia Web site. Cooper and her husband counted as their friends or acquaintances such luminaries as educators W.E.B. DuBois, Lugenia Burns Hope, John Hope Franklin, Benjamin E. Mays and E. Franklin Frazier, this Historymakers Website says.
Also, she is…
…the grandmother of one of our columnists here at the St. Petersburg Times.