Marvel cooke biography
•
Marvel Cooke oral history interview
1989-1992- Creator
- Cooke, Marvel Jackson, 1903-2000
- Call number
- Sc MG 859
- Physical description
- 2 folders
- Language
- English
- Preferred Citation
- [Item], Marvel Cooke oral history interview, Sc MG 859, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library
- Repository
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
- Access to materials
- Request an in-person research appointment.
Marvel Cooke was a newspaper editor, publisher, magazine and journal editor, and print journalist. Born in April 1903, in Mankato, Minnesota, Cooke attended the University of Minnesota. She became an editorial assistant of the Crisis in New York (1925) and was the secretary to the women's editor at the Amsterdam News in 1928, where she also became the first female news reporter. In 1936, she joined the Communist Party and became the assistant
•
Cooke, Marvel c. 1901–2000
Journalist and activist
Immersed in the Harlem Renaissance
Refused to Testify During Communist “Witch Hunt”
Exposed “The Bronx Slave Market”
Sources
Marvel Cooke’s life story is an exceptional one, from her upper-class upbringing in a politically progressive Minnesota family to her adult life as a journalist, trade unionist, and political activist. Cooke came to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and befriended some of history’s leading artists and intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Richard Wright. As a journalist, her landmark series, “The Bronx Slave Market,” exposed the exploitation of black women by wealthy white women in New York. She fought for workers’ rights as a member of the Newspaper Guild, and was called to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy about her membership in the Communist Party. In the seventies, she worked on behalf of the defense of radical ic
•
Marvel Cooke
African-American reporter and activist (1903–2000)
Marvel Cooke | |
|---|---|
Marvel Cooke, c. 1950s | |
| Born | Marvel Jackson (1903-04-04)April 4, 1903 Mankato, Minnesota |
| Died | November 29, 2000(2000-11-29) (aged 97) Sugar Hill, Manhattan |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, writer, civil rights activist |
| Employer(s) | New York Amsterdam News, The Crisis, The People's röst, The daglig Compass, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College |
| Organization(s) | Newspaper Guild, National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions, American-Soviet Friendship Committee |
| Known for | First African-American woman to work at a mainstream white-owned newspaper; assistant to W. E. B. Du Bois |
| Political party | Communist Party, USA |
| Spouse | Cecil Cooke |
Marvel Jackson Cooke (April 4, 1903 – November 29, 2000) was a pioneering American reporter, writer, and civil rights activist. She was the first African-American woman to work at a mainstream white-owned