Search Results

This chapter describes events from 1968 to 1971. These include F&M Schaefer brewery’s appointment of Andy Cooper as director of community affairs in 1968; Andy’s promoting activities at Schaefer; his appointment to the Brooklyn Advisory Council of the New York State Division of Human Rights in February 1969; his organization of a protest against state senator Waldaba Stewart’s plan to create an improvement authority for Atlantic Avenue—Andy saw the proposed changes as a crude land grab that would allow the state to evict residents from their homes and build a superhighway; and his departure from Schaefer in 1971 to work independently as a public relations consultant.

This chapter describes events from 1973 to 1976. These include the publication of Local Level on January 26, 1973—a four-page, tabloid-size newsletter by the Council against a Poverty-Citizenship Education Program, with Andrew W. Cooper listed as the editor; Andy’s weekly column for the Amsterdam News starting July 1974; and his return to college, Adelphi University in New York City, in fall 1974. The chapter also details several political columns written by Andy in 1976.

This chapter describes events from 1993 to 1996. These include Cooper’s recruitment of new personnel for the City Sun; real estate developer Abe Hirschfeld’s appointment of Wilbert Tatum of the Amsterdam News as editor and co-publisher of the New York Post; Mayor Dinkins’s reelection campaign; and the City Sun’s debts and collapse in October 1996.

Andy Cooper died of a stroke on January 28, 2002 at Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. The memorial service was held on February 15 at First Presbyterian Church at 124 Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights, a few blocks from the former City Sun office. News of Cooper’s death was published in the New York Times, Daily News, and Amsterdam News. On the day of the memorial service, Brooklyn borough president Marty Moskowitz issued a proclamation recognizing Cooper’s lifetime of work in voting rights, public affairs, and journalism. On June 22, 2006, he issued a second proclamation declaring Andrew W. Cooper Memorial Day.

This chapter describes the suit filed by Andrew W. Cooper against New York political leaders on June 23, 1966, in U.S. District Court (Eastern) in Brooklyn. The suit aimed to prevent an election in black Brooklyn until the congressional district lines were redrawn. Cooper alleged that New York State leaders had disenfranchised African Americans. Unlike the South, where black citizens were rebuffed through threats of violence, intimidation, or chicanery such as poll taxes and “intelligence tests,” northern power brokers diluted black New Yorker’s voting power.

This chapter describes events from 1977 to 1978. These include the opening of Trans Urban News Service’s office in summer 1977; Cooper and Utrice Leid’s grant application to fund TNS and hire staff; the strike held by New York City’s three daily newspapers, the Times, Daily News, and Post in August 1978; and black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s refusal to support black candidates for major political office.

This chapter describes Andy Cooper’s weekly paper, called the City Sun, which promised an editorial environment that was compatible with advertisers’ interests without allowing them to dictate tone or content. The City Sun’s first issue was published on June 6, 1984. By the time the sixth edition was released in July, the paper received its first of many letters from Mayor Koch. Cooper’s City Sun also broke a taboo of other black newspapers—it criticized black politicians whenever it became convinced their behavior was venal, lazy, or self-serving.

This chapter describes events in 1992. These include the competition between the City Sun and the Amsterdam News for the city’s readers; Utrice Leid’s promotion of Farhan Haq, who had been the City Sun’s international affairs reporter for nine months, to metro editor; legal proceedings in the Crown Heights case; the City Sun’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October; and the Cooper–Leid confrontation and breakup.

This chapter describes events from 1979 to 1982. These include the start of the Trans Urban News Service’s publication of TNS Reports in 1981; the return of Andy Cooper’s “One Man’s Opinion” column; the Trans Urban News Service’s receipt of a $50,000 grant from the Greater New York Fund and United Way Special Allocations Committee; and Cooper’s receipt of the D. Parke Gibson Journalism Award from the New York chapter of the Public Relations Society of America in October 1982.