Andrew W. Cooper (August 21, 1927 – January 28, 2002) was an

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

activist during the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

businessman A businessperson, businessman, or businesswoman is an individual who has founded, owns, or holds shares in (including as an angel investor) a private-sector company. A businessperson undertakes activities (commercial or industrial) for the ...

, and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

. He was the publisher and editor-in-chief of '' The City Sun''.

Biography

Cooper was born in 1927 in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York. He attended Boys High School and

Adelphi University Adelphi University is a private university in Garden City, New York. Adelphi also has centers in Manhattan, Hudson Valley, and Suffolk County. There is also a virtual, online campus for remote students. It is the oldest institution of higher ed ...

. From 1951 through 1971, he was an executive of the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company. In 1965, Cooper brought suit under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 against racial

gerrymandering In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...

. African Americans and Latinos made up the majority of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in which he lived, but the neighborhood was divided among five

congressional district Congressional districts, also known as electoral districts and legislative districts, electorates, or wards in other nations, are divisions of a larger administrative region that represent the population of a region in the larger congressional bod ...

s, each represented by a white Congressmember. Cooper opposed districts drawn in what he described as "so tortuous, artificial and labyrinthine a manner that the lines are irrational and unrelated to any proper purpose". His lawsuit, ''Cooper v. Power'', was successful. It resulted in the creation of

New York's 12th Congressional District New York's 12th congressional district is a congressional district for the United States House of Representatives located in New York City. As of 2023, it is represented by Democrat Jerry Nadler, redistricted incumbent of the former 10th cong ...

and the election in 1968 of

Shirley Chisholm Shirley Anita Chisholm ( ; ; November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress. Chisholm represented New York's 12th congressional distr ...

, the first black woman ever elected to the

U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washin ...

. In the 1970s, Cooper left the business world to become a journalist. He started the Trans-Urban News Service (TUNS) in 1977, with the dual goals of training minority journalists and producing reporting that was relevant to their communities. The

Public Relations Society of America The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) is a nonprofit trade association for public relations professionals. It was founded in 1947 by combining the American Council on Public Relations and the National Association of Public Relations Cou ...

gave TUNS its top award in 1979 for its multi-part series on racial tensions between blacks and Jews in Crown Heights. Cooper wrote a weekly column, "One Man's Opinion", for the ''

Amsterdam News The ''Amsterdam News'' (also known as ''New York Amsterdam News'') is a weekly Black-owned newspaper serving New York City. It is one of the oldest newspapers geared toward African Americans in the United States and has published columns by s ...

'' and also wrote for ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...

''. Cooper founded ''The City Sun'', a weekly newspaper that covered issues of interest to

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

s in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, in 1984. According to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''The City Sun'' had a circulation of 18,500 in 1987. Financial difficulties forced Cooper to shut down ''The City Sun'' in 1996. Cooper was recognized as Journalist of the Year by the

National Association of Black Journalists The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is an organization of African-American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C., by 44 journalists, the NABJ's stated purpose is to provide quality p ...

in 1987 for his work at ''The City Sun''. Cooper died in Brooklyn in 2002 of a stroke.

Biography

References

Further reading