Go Ahead Sister Cooper!

If you ever needed inspiration and motivation to vote in this very paramount presidential election, look no further than to an 106 year old woman of substance and style named Ann Nixon Cooper.
I saw her yesterday on the CNN weekend interview with host Don Lemon. My heart, was as the old folks in church would say, was "Strangely moved.”
Mrs. Cooper was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, 1902; which was 39 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 37 years after the 13th Amendment, which made slavery illegal in the United States of America.
Ann Nixon Cooper is said to have known the giants of American history who are not only considered great African Americans, but great Americans period. Such notable’s like W.E.B. Dubois, E. Franklin Frazier, Benjamin Mays, and John Hope Franklin, were part of Ann Nixon Cooper’s social network.
If you lived as long as Mrs. Cooper, you’ve seen the slow but steady transformation of America into a nation that has nearly achieved its ideal of “liberty and justice for all.”
That’s why this story of a woman excited about voting for the first president of color is so powerful.
Just in case you might have forgotten, America was not always a pleasant country that respected and protected the rights of African Americans. Mrs. Cooper lived through the years between Jim Crow Segregation and Civil Rights. For her to live to see the potential next president of America to be a Black Man, is tribute on how far our nation has come.
Her story must inspire those of us who stand on the shoulders of her suffering and resilience.

While viewing Mrs. Cooper’s story, I thought about my late grandmother Mrs. Sallie Mitchell, born 1915 in Greenville County, South Carolina. Like Ann Nixon Cooper,she grew up in the times of Jim Crow. When she was alive, she told me stories about the “old south.” It was her hands callous through picking cotton and cleaning floors on the “other side of town,” which gave me spending money while I attended Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama

When November 4th comes around, I’m going to cast a vote in her memory and in the memory of others who did not live to see this day like Ann Nixon Cooper.