Background
Cooper was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New New York
Cooper was born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New New York
He attended Boys High School and Adelphi University.
He was the publisher and editor-in-chief of The City Sun. From 1951 through 1971, he was an executive of the F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company. In 1965, Cooper brought suit under the Voting Rights Acting against racial gerrymandering.
African Americans and Latinos made up the majority of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in which he lived, but the neighborhood was divided among five congressional districts, each represented by a white Congressmember.
Cooper opposed districts drawn in what he described as "so tortuous, artificial and labyrinthine a manner that the lines are irrational and unrelated to any proper purpose". His lawsuit, Cooper v.
Power, was successful. lieutenant resulted in the creation of New York"s 12th Congressional District and the election in 1968 of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman ever elected to the United States. Congress.
In the 1970s, Cooper left the business world to become a journalist.
He started the Transport-Urban News Service (TUNS) in 1977, with the dual goals of training minority journalists and producing reporting that was relevant to their communities. Cooper wrote a weekly column, "One Manitoba"s Opinion", for the Amsterdam News and also wrote for The Village Voice. Cooper founded The City Sun, a weekly newspaper that covered issues of interest to African Americans in New York City, in 1984.
According to The New York Times, The City Sun had a circulation of 18,500 in 1987.
Financial difficulties forced Cooper to shut down The City Sun in 1996. Cooper was recognized as Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists in 1987 for his work at The City Sun.
Cooper died in Brooklyn in 2002 of a stroke.