  At the young age of nine, barely removed from slavery, Cooper (then Annie Haywood) begins school at Saint Augustine Normal School in Raleigh, North Carolina where she continued her education for about fourteen years. During this time she also worked as a tutor and teacher. Cooper completed studies at what became Saint Augustine’s Normal Collegiate School in 1877 and then married George Cooper. The newlyweds continued to study and teach at Saint Augustine’s, but George Cooper, who went on to become an Episcopal priest, died two short years later. In a letter seeking admission to Oberlin College in Ohio, Cooper lists the content of her previous studies including English; Latin: Cesar (seven books), Virgil’s Aeneid (six books), Sallust’s Cataline and Jugurtha, a few orations of Cicero; Greek: White’s first lessons, Goodwin’s Greek Reader—including selections from Xenophon, Plato, Herodotus, and Thucydides, the Iliad; along with Algebra and Geometry. It is obvious that her education was deeply rooted in the history of Western philosophy and the classics. Cooper gains admission and leaves Saint Augustine’s for Oberlin College in 1881 where she goes on to earn a B.A. in mathematics in 1884 and then an M.A. for college teaching in 1887.