Born: 21 July 1837, United States
Died: 20 November 1913
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Helen Appo
African-American activist and philanthropist Helen Appo Cook was a leader in the women’s club movement. In 1892, she co-founded and served as president of the Colored Women’s League, which later merged with another group to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. Having attended women’s rights meetings with her mother as a teenager, she was also a suffragist and publicly called out Susan B. Anthony’s racism in an 1898 letter published in The Washington Post.
Helen Appo married John Francis Cook, Jr. in 1864, and by 1895, he was the wealthiest African-American man in Washington, D.C., with wealth reported at $200,000. Cook used her money and status to uplift African-American communities, promoting causes and organizations like the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children, which she was a member of for almost 35 years. In 1880, she became the first African-American woman elected secretary, a role she held for a decade, and later served as president.
The Colored Women’s League focused more on education and professional training in areas like sewing and teaching. Eventually, the league operated seven free kindergartens and several daycare centers. At one time, the organization is believed to have had the largest membership of any African American women’s club in the country.
Following her death in 1913, one African-American newspaper observed that she was “easily the wealthiest colored woman in the District of Columbia. The Cook estate has been considered to be worth not less than a quarter of a million dollars…Mrs. Cook was greatly interested in Negro organizations and charity work and was a woman of kindly heart and broad sympathies.”