Fannie Jackson Coppin - Educator

Photograph courtesy The African American

Museum and Library at Oakland 

(A Division of The Oakland Public Library)

Fannie Jackson Coppin was known as an Educator, Missionary and a lifelong Advocate for female higher education. Born into slavery in 1837, Fannie was believed to be self-educated. In her youth, prominent white families, who noticed her exceptional intelligence, would help guide Fannie, giving her the opportunity to learn, in exchange for her work as their servant. Fannie would eventually attend Oberlin College in Ohio. Oberlin College is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and one of the first colleges in the U.S. to admit African Americans.  Fannie mastered Latin, Greek and mathematics and graduated in 1865. She was the first Black teacher at the Oberlin Academy; a private preparatory school in Oberlin, Ohio. Fannie was committed to helping educate other Black people too. She wanted to dispel the myth that Blacks were intellectually inferior. Fannie became a teacher at the Quakers' Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. Throughout her life, Fannie would share words of wisdom to educate and inspire. One quote was, "Good manners will often take people where neither money nor education will take them." Because of her education and advocacy, Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland (an Historically Black College and University - HBCU) is named after Fannie Jackson Coppin.