Legacy:

“something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.”[1]

 

In the March 13, 1954,

edition of The Huntsville Mirror, Huntsville, Alabama, Ella M. Martin, society editor, penned an article about an address delivered by Mrs. Jessyca Divers Hayden, renowned concert artist, on the “importance of music as a factor toward integration, racial equality, and world unity.”[2] The title of Mrs. Hayden’s presentation was “Untrod Paths of Women in Music.”[3] Having an advanced degree in music from Northwestern University and post-graduate work at the Julliard School of Music in New York, Mrs. Divers Hayden exemplified creating footprints in paths that had not been well-traveled by Black women.

 

In 1979,

Mrs. Nellouise D. Watkins received her Ph.D. in computer science at a time when only 17.8% of women in the American workforce had a bachelor’s degree or higher.[4],[5] During her tenure as a mathematics professor at Bennett College, she garnered more than $7 million in grants for the academic advancement of Black women “who later became computer technologists, scientists, educators, and physicians.”[6] Dr. Watkins was a trailblazer in the “untrod paths” of women in science. The indelible footprints of these two women made it possible for Dr. Sharon W. Cooper to find her way into the annals of history. Like her aunt and mother before her, she has created a legacy of excellence and opportunity for Black women in the realms of academia, medicine, music and philanthropy.

 

Dr. Cooper stated in a September 10, 2019, 

Front Porch Conversations interview with Lisa C. Williams that her mother taught her that “If you meet with a barrier, you find a way around it.”[7] The paths laid out before her by the matriarchs in her family guided her not only around barriers, but through them. She has broken barriers by becoming one of the country’s foremost experts on the study and treatment of child and adolescent victims of sexual exploitation. She has excelled in the field of forensic pediatrics and is, herself, an accomplished pianist and organist. All of the intelligence, talents, gifts and graces that her aunt and mother possessed, they passed on to their legacy bearer, Dr. Sharon W. Cooper.