- 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 managing editor of the People's Voice, a militant newspaper, in 1942. Cooke also was a reporter for the Daily Compass in New York (1950); the national legal defense secretary for the Angela Davis Defense Committee (1969); and the national vice chair of the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship (1980s). Cooke died in November 2000 in New York, New York. This collection includes an interview transcript with Marvel Cooke, conducted by Kathleen Currie, for the Washington Press Club Foundation project, "Women in Journalism". It was recorded in 1989. Additionally, there is correspondence between Cooke and the Foundation and a typescript draft of "Marvel Cooke: An African American Woman Journalist Who Agitated for Racial Reform" by Rodger Allan Streitmatter and Barbara Diggs-Brown for Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, #16 (July 1992).
Administrative information
Source of acquisition
Gift of Roger Wilkins, 2012.
Bibliography
Library of Congress. "Cooke, Marvel Jackson, 1903-2000." Accessed Octrober 19, 2020, https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no93010940.html.
Key terms
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Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Second Floor