Born into slavery, Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) became one of the most important Black feminist writers and educators of the twentieth century. She and her mother were enslaved in the household of George Washington Heywood, a prominent lawyer who served as the official attorney for Wake County in North Carolina. After the war Cooper received a scholarship to Saint Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute, which was then a newly established school for formerly enslaved people and their children run by the Episcopal Church. Today it is known as Saint Augustine’s University.