Contributing Writer,
So often in life we see it, and it catches our eye and then our heart – big things in small packages. Annie Cooper caught my eye at a Jackson City Branch NAACP meeting three years ago with her warm and welcoming smile and over time I’ve seen her heart and her indomitable spirit. Her journey has been marked by success, service, and perseverance. Cooper sat down with this writer at the offices of The Mississippi Link newspaper to share her story for Women’s History Month.
She was born in Jackson to loving parents, her mother a school cafeteria worker, and her father a mechanic, truck driver, and Baptist preacher. She has four siblings, one sister and three brothers, and she came right smack in the middle. She attended what was then a segregated Brinkley Junior-Senior High School through her junior year, then transferred to Lanier Junior-Senior High School for her final year and graduation. In tenth grade, after participating in a guidance session on occupations, she decided to become a fashion designer – she had already been making some of her own clothes. But who would have imagined her next move…