After her graduation she was elected permanent teacher and made principal of the Normal Department, and professor of Latin and Mathematics in the State University, which position she held until a few years ago, when she was called to a like position in the Eckstein Norton University.
Miss Cook has appeared on the programmes of some of the most noted bodies of the race, read a paper on Afro-American women at the Educational Congress in Chicago, 1893, and has addressed crowded houses throughout the New England States under the auspices of the Baptist Women's Home Mission Society.
MISS MARY V. COOK, A. B., A. M.
In 1892, when a fight was made against the enactment of the Separate Coach Law, she, with three other ladies, was invited to the State Capital to enter protest before the Legislature. She has traveled extensively through the South land and made a close study of her people, their progress, etc. She has gone as far west as California in the interest of the work in which she is engaged, and the school is now reaping the benefits of that trip. She has recently accepted a place on the Executive Board of the National Federation of Women, of which Mrs. Victoria Mathews is chairman.
Miss Cook is a thorough business woman; her industry and close application to affairs intrusted to her is of marked comment. She is conscientiously consistent with an honest conviction of right, to which she adheres with admirable fearlessness. She is, by her very constitution, compassionate, gentle, patient, self-denying, loving, hopeful, trustful, and by the power of her own pure soul she unconsciously molds the lives of those under her. It would be utterly impossible to live on day after day with Miss Cook, and not feel the desire for as noble a life springing up in your own heart. She has a wonderful influence over her pupils, who love her with the love that casteth out fear. And she not only influences them, but all who come in contact with her are wonderfully impressed.
Miss Cook is an intelligent little woman, a deep thinker; keeps abreast of the times and holds no mean place in the galaxy of distinguished colored women.
The women of her own State delight to honor her and have conferred upon her some of the highest offices in the organizations of which she is a member. Miss Cook has a literary inclination; being a strong, graceful writer, she has contributed much that is good to colored journalism.
When she has appeared on the public platform, she has never failed to carry her audience by the force of her terse style and convincing argument. She was recently appointed Commissioner of the State of Kentucky to the Women's Congress which convened at Atlanta, Ga., December, 1895, before which body she read an interesting paper.