Frances "Fanny" Jackson Coppin
(1835-1912)

Nothing is quite like strength, fortitude, and determination in a woman. These words best describe the qualities of Frances Jackson Coppin, an educator, who was born a captive in Washington, D.C. Her freedom was bought by her aunt, Sarah Clark, for $125 who saved the money from her $6.00 a month salary. Ms. Coppin worked as a domestic; but she used her salary to pay for a private tutor and piano lessons. In 1859, she entered the Rhode Island State Normal School in Bristol. From 1860 to 1865, she attended Oberlin College, the only school that accepted a few Blacks at the time and earned a B.A. degree.

During this time, Coppin had sixteen private music students and established an evening adult education class for freed Blacks, which she taught voluntarily four nights a week. Because she received a lot of publicity for this, Oberlin named her a student teacher for preparatory classes. She was the first African-American student named to this position.

In 1865, Coppin was appointed principal of the girls' division of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia (later known as Cheyney State College). In 1869, she became principal of the entire institute.

This institute had been founded in 1837 by the Society of Friends (Quakers) to counter anti-abolitionist claims that Blacks were incapable of acquiring a classical education. At the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, it was seen that many trade schools had done exemplary work. However, trade unions refused to admit African-Americans. Therefore Coppin addressed audiences everywhere, about the need for an industrial plant, and she collected a fee of one dollar per person. Ultimately, her industrial plant was fully established, offering courses in carpentering, printing, plastering, bricklaying, stenography, typewriting, shoemaking, and tailoring. For the girls, cooking, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, typing, and stenography. (More about the industrial aspect of the school can be found in her 1913 autobiography, Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching.)

Activist that she was, Coppin campaigned to earn women the right to vote. She also wrote a column for The Christian Recorder, the A.M.E. Church news journal. After her retirement in 1902, Ms. Fanny Jackson Coppin traveled with her husband, A.M.E. Bishop L. J. Coppin, to South Africa as a missionary.

In her efforts, this dedicated woman proved conclusively that the value of cooperative effort is important, and that what help there is for ourselves, is in ourselves.