  Cooper wrote “My Racial Philosophy” (1930) in response to a survey distributed by Charles S. Johnson to Black college graduates. In 1927 Johnson became chair of a newly formed social science department at Fisk University. Other prominent members of the department faculty at that time included now famed social scientists Robert E. Park and E. Franklin Frazier. The formation of this department at Fisk was made possible by a $200,000 contribution from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial—for whom Spelman College, the renowned historically Black college for women in Atlanta, GA is also named (Gasman 1999, 6). By 1930, Johnson was collecting data from this survey taken by Cooper and numerous others, and by 1946 Johnson had become the sixth president, though the first Black president, of Fisk. 