Coralie Franklin Cook

Coralie Franklin Cook (March 1861 – August 25, 1942) was an American educator, public speaker, and government official. She is also the first known descendant among those enslaved at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate to graduate from college. Cook, along with Mary Church Terrell, Anna J. Cooper, Angelina Weld Grimke, and Nannie Helen Burroughs, "exemplified the third generation of African American woman suffragists who related to both the Black and the white worlds." Early life Coralie Franklin was born in Lexington, Virginia in March 1861. Coralie was the younger of two daughters from Albert Barbour Franklin and Mary Elizabeth Edmondson, both of whom were enslaved by a Southern aristocratic family. Franklin was a descendant of Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings, an enslaved mixed-race woman, whose children and many descendants occupied the most valued household and tradesman positions at Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. Franklin's maternal great-grandfather, Brown Colbert, was a former slave and nailer at the Monticello estate. Colbert was the son of Betty Brown and the grandson of Elizabeth Hemings. Franklin had one older sister named Mary Elizabeth. In 1870, their father, Albert Franklin, a "very well respected man amongst his community", placed his two daughters in the Storer Normal School at Harpers Ferry. At the time, Storer was administered as a Normal Academy and was the only institution for higher learning available for African Americans in West Virginia. While in school, Coralie Franklin showed a talent for literary studies and reading. She was so proficient in reading that, as a child, it became a special attraction for her to read out loud at public gatherings. While attending college, Franklin was an honorary member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a member of the Red Cross, the NAACP, the Book Lovers Club and the Juvenile Protective Society. She graduated from Storer College in 1880, the first known college graduate among the descendants of Jefferson's slaves at Monticello. In 1881, Franklin continued her education through institutions in Boston and Philadelphia where she studied elocution.