Annie Lee Cooper

Civil Rights Leader

Birthday June 2, 1910

Birth Sign Gemini

Birthplace Alabama

DEATH DATE Nov 24, 2010 (100)

#132,985 Most Popular

About

Remembered for her role in the Selma Voting Rights Movement of 1965, this Alabama-born activist hit Sheriff Jim Clark after he used a law enforcement club to try to force her out of a voting line at Alabama's Dallas County Courthouse.

Before Fame

She left school in the seventh grade and eventually found work as a nursing home caregiver. She was unjustly fired from this position as a result of her civil rights activism.

Trivia

She lived more than five months past her one hundredth birthday.

Family Life

The children of Charles Wilkerson and Lucy Jones, she and her nine siblings spent their early years in Selma, Alabama. She later lived and worked in Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, before returning to her native Alabama in the early 1960s.

Associated With

In the 2014 movie Selma, talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey portrays Annie Lee Cooper.