FOLLOWING BIOGRAPHY ON BACK OF PLATE:

EDWARD E. COOPER - For twenty-five years following Emancipation and the new opportunities which that great event brought, many of the brightest minds the colored race has produced, had been endeavoring to solve the perplexing and important problem of how to make a newspaper, published in the interest of the colored people, a profitable business enter-prise. The number of such newspaper ventures whose managers failed to solve the problem mounts well up into the hundreds. In the early spring of 1893, Mr. Edward E. Cooper, fresh from conquests in race journalism In Indianapolls, came to Washington and established "The Colored American," a weekly newspaper whose circulation last year ,was put down at 12,000 copies per week, and numbers among its readers residents in every clime where our flag floats. Mr. Cooper interpreted the "want" for such a newspaper. His first venture in journalism was "The Colored World," published at Indianapolls. This was quite a success, but he gave it up to accept a position in the Railway Mail Service. On leaving the Mail Service he again embarked in journalism and established "The Indianapolis Freeman," an illustrated weekly. This was a new feature. "The Freeman" quickly jumped into great popularity and soon gained national fame. Having made "The Freeman" a success, he decided to go to Washington for a larger field of endeavor. Mr. Cooper is undoubtedly the best all-around newspaper man the colored race has yet produced. Edward E. Cooper was born near the little town of Smyriia, Tenn., and attended the old barracks school for colored children on Knowles Street, Nashville, south of the Nashville and Chattanooga depot; which school afterwards became the nucleus of Fisk University. He began life selling papers, etc., on trains; then worked on a farm two years. He next went to Indianapolls, attended the public schools and graduated from the high school. In 1883, he married Miss Tenie Jones, one of the most cultivated young ladies of Paris, Ky. Mr. Cooper freely acknowledges that his wife has been the balance-wheel in his life that has brought him what success he has gained.