Marvel Jackson Cooke

Marvel Jackson Cooke was a pioneering journalist, writer, and civil rights activist, and the first African American woman to work at a mainstream white-owned daily newspaper. Born in Mankato, Minnesota, she was educated at the University of Minnesota (B.A. in English, 1925). In 1926, Cooke moved to Harlem, where she worked as an assistant to W. E. B. Du Bois, editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis. Recognizing her talent, Du Bois put her in charge of a column “In the Magazines,” where she summarized information relevant to the community from other publications of the day, and wrote critiques of works by literary figures. 

In 1927, she worked at the New York Amsterdam News, where she was the first woman reporter in its forty-year history. In 1931, she helped found the first New York City chapter of the American Newspaper Guild and was involved in a strike action at the New York Amsterdam News. In 1936, she joined the Communist Party and from 1942 to 1947 served as assistant managing editor of the People’s Voice, a militant weekly newspaper owned by Adam Clayton Powell. 

In 1950, she joined New York’s The Daily Compass, becoming the first African American woman to serve as a reporter for a mainstream white-owned newspaper. Her 1950 article on Black children’s drug use, “From Candy to Heroin,” led New York City to launch a program aimed at decreasing teenage drug addiction. Her compelling five-part series for The Daily Compass entitled “The Bronx Slave Market,” partly based on undercover work she had published in 1935 for The Crisis, highlighted the exploitation of Black domestic workers in white homes. Her series and an accompanying editorial led the Domestic Workers Union and the New York State Employment Agency to create courses for household workers. 

In 1953, she became the New York director of the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions, an independent socialist organization that brought together artists, scientists, and professionals to seek revocation of the Hollywood Black List and support the presidential campaign of Henry Wallace. In 1953, she was called twice to testify before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations regarding her involvement with the Communist Party. She invoked her Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer their questions. In the 1980s, Cooke served as the national vice chair of the National Council for American-Soviet Friendship.