A passionate activist and political radical, Marvel Jackson Cooke (1901-2000) was also a trailblazer in journalism. Born in Minnesota, Marvel Jackson moved to Harlem in 1926, where she began her career in journalism working for W.E.B. DuBois at The Crisis. There, she first published her groundbreaking article “The Bronx Slave Market” with co-author Ella Baker, detailing the exploitatitve conditions experienced by Black women seeking domestic work in New York City. In 1928, Cooke became the first woman reporter for the New York Amsterdam News, one of the oldest Black newspapers in the country, and she later became the only Black woman reporter at the Daily Compass, a white-owned newspaper. After the Compass went out of business in 1952, Cooke was elected New York Director of the Council of Arts, Services, and Professions, and continued her political activism as a member of the Communist Party and National Vice Chairman of the American-Soviet Friendship Committee. Cooke dedicated her later life to writing for the New World Review and continued her political activism.
