Algernon J. Cooper, Jr.
*Algernon J. Cooper, Jr. was born on this date in 1944. He is a Black politician and lawyer.
Algernon Johnson Cooper, Jr., his sister Peggy, and brother Gary were born in Mobile, Alabama, to Gladys Catherine Mouton and Algernon Johnson Cooper, Sr. Cooper attended St. Peter Claver Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, until he attended Marmion Academy in Aurora, Illinois, in 1958, as its first black student, and graduated in 1962. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1966 with a B.A. degree. In 1969, Cooper earned a law degree from New York University.
1967, he worked for Senator Robert F. Kennedy and served on Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968. Cooper was with Kennedy at the time of Kennedy's assassination. From 1968 to 1969, Cooper served as national treasurer of the American Bar Association's Law Student Division. In 1968, Cooper founded the Black American Law Students Association.
In 1970, he represented the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during a challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama's freedom of choice school desegregation law. On September 8, 1970, he threatened to take parents who refused to send their children to segregated schools rather than the integrated schools where their children were assigned to federal court.
On December 18, 1970, Cooper became the first black member of the Mobile Bar Association. An attempt to waive the vote was unsuccessful. He was married to BJ Hampton on December 23, 2001. Cooper and his wife now reside in Fairhope, AL. Cooper opened a new firm, CooperLaw, in Daphne, Al. They specialized in litigation. In 2007, Cooper served as the Democratic nominee for the Alabama Senate in the 32nd district but was defeated.
