Marvel Cooke was recommended to the WPCF oral history project by Kay Mills, author of A Place in the News: From the Women's Pages to the Front Page (Dodd, Mead, 1988). Mills interviewed Cooke for her book and felt that she would be an excellent oral history narrator.

Mills was right. Marvel Cooke's journalistic experience, even though it ended in the early fifties, was both varied and unique. She began her career working for W.E.B. DuBois, editor of the Crisis, the NAACP publication. She went from the Crisis to the Amsterdam News. At the Amsterdam News, she was secretary to the women's editor, the editor-in-chief of a short-lived feature syndicate and a general assignment reporter. While at the Amsterdam News, Cooke helped organize the first Newspaper Guild unit at a black-owned newspaper. Later, in 1935, she was in the thick of the successful eleven-week Guild strike against the News. After leaving the Amsterdam News, she became assistant managing editor at the People's Voice, a Harlem-based newspaper owned by Adam Clayton Powell. She ended her journalism career as a reporter and feature writer at the Compass, a short-lived white-owned New York City daily newspaper. At the Compass, Cooke was the only black and the only woman reporter.

After leaving the Compass in the early fifties, Cooke devoted herself to political activism. During the Amsterdam News strike Cooke had joined the Communist party. She was national legal defense secretary of the Angela Davis Defense Committee in the late sixties and early seventies. Today she is national vice chairman of the American-Soviet Friendship Committee.

Cooke's background is indeed fascinating. In addition, she is a woman of strong opinions which she expresses without reservation.

I interviewed Cooke in her apartment on Edgecombe Avenue in New York City, on Harlem's "Sugar Hill." Cooke has lived in the building, though in different apartments, since the 1920s. The building is historic; many figures of the Harlem renaissance lived there.

The interview sessions were split between two trips to New York, one in October and another in November of 1989. Although Cooke has surrounded herself with important memorabilia from her life—autographed copies of books written by friends Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes and a sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett, another friend—she didn't save one clipping from her journalism career. "I didn't think it was important," she said.

The only piece of journalism memorabilia in her apartment was a framed photocopy of a story Cooke did for the Compass. (The only reason she had this story is that a relative found it and gave it to her.) Cooke talks about this story in our interview. To get it, she posed as a domestic day worker. In it, she exposes the horrible working conditions to which these women were subjected.

Prior to interviewing Cooke, I reviewed notes I made at Howard University's collection on the black press for previous interviews. I also spoke with Roger Wilkins, Mrs. Cooke's nephew. Wilkins, a former New York Times reporter and assistant attorney general of the United States, was then a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. He was very helpful in filling me in on his family; he also suggested areas I might pursue with his aunt.

I also drew on a previous oral history interview I conducted with Ethel Payne, a reporter for the Chicago Defender, a black-owned newspaper, whose journalism career post-dated Cooke's. A Black Woman's Experience - From Schoolhouse to White House, the self-published autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, was also helpful. Kay Mills shared her insights and generously lent me notes from her interview with Cooke. Cooke also recommended two books to me: When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984) and The Life of Langston Hughes, I Too, Sing, America, Volume I: 1902-1941 (Oxford University Press, 1986). These were helpful in acquainting me with the milieu in which Cooke lived and worked.

Kathleen Currie
August 22, 1990

more follows...

1903 ~ Born April 4 in Mankato, Minnesota, daughter of Amy Wood Jackson and Madison Jackson.

1907 ~ Moves to custom-built house in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

1925 ~ Graduates from the University of Minnesota, 22 years old.

1926-27 ~ Moves to New York City. Hired as editorial assistant at the Crisis, NAACP publication edited by W.E.B. DuBois.

1927 ~ Madison Jackson, father, dies.

1928 ~ Joins Amsterdam News as secretary to the women's editor.

1929 ~ Breaks engagement to Roy Wilkins, future executive director of the NAACP. Marries Cecil Cooke, internationally famous athlete, graduate of Syracuse (B.A.) and Columbia Universities (M.A.). Moves to Greensboro, North Carolina with new husband to teach history, English and Latin in the high school department of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.

1931 ~ Hired by Amsterdam News as head of feature syndicate. Becomes a reporter on the News shortly after that.

1935 ~ Marvel Cooke involved in successful eleven-week strike by the Newspaper Guild against the Amsterdam News. She joins the Communist party.

1940 ~ Hired as assistant managing editor of the People's Voice, owned by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, future member of Congress from New York, and Charles Buchanan, a businessman.

1947 ~ Leaves the People's Voice.

1950 ~ Hired as a reporter and feature writer for the Daily Compass, a white-owned daily newspaper in New York City. Cooke becomes the only black and only woman reporter on staff. Amy Wood Jackson, mother, dies.

1952 ~ The Compass closes.

1953 ~ Hired as New York director of the Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions. Appears before a hearing instigated by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (Wisc.) in both New York and Washington, D.C.

1960 ~ Hired in office of internationally famous ear surgeon, Dr. Samuel Rosen, New York City.

1969-71 ~ Volunteers as national Legal Defense Secretary for the Angela Davis Defense Committee.

1971 ~ Volunteers for the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship. (In 1989, at the time of the oral history interview, Ms. Cooke was national vice chairman.)

1978 ~ Cecil Cooke dies.