On March 23, 1925 at the age of 66, Anna Julia Cooper stood ready to defend her dissertation before a review committee at the University of Paris. Cooper's remarkable intellectual achievement was the product of years of hard work and determination, a highly unusual journey for a child born to an enslaved mother in 1858. Her dissertation, "L'attitude de la France a L'egard de L'esclavage pendant la Revolution," offered a bold interpretation of the French Revolution. In it, Cooper examined the relations between the 18th century revolutionists in Paris and the representatives and inhabitants of...