“A devoted daughter, sister, and soror, who carried her family’s learning and her community’s grace across an ocean.”

Beatrice E. Lee Cooper was born in Chicago to Prof. Samuel I. Lee and Nora Lee. She had a brother, Clarence and a sister Etta. Her home was often noted in the Chicago Defender for its hospitality and civic engagement. A gifted scholar, she attended the University of Chicago, where she earned the title of Associate in French and German in 1914 and made the highest academic average of her class that year.

During her university years, she became a leader in several sororities and clubs that shaped early Black women’s collegiate life. She served as secretary and later president in Upsilon Delta Pi Sorority, participated in Upsilon Sigma Kappa, and by 1914 was named secretary of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated—later elected vice president of its Boule Directorate in 1916.

A talented linguist and cultural organizer, she hosted musicales and served as an usher at major concerts, including programs at Chicago’s Quinn Chapel, and worked alongside community leaders such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

In 1920, she married Opal D. Cooper, a celebrated percussionist and bandleader, and traveled to France to join him. As “Beatrice Lee Cooper of Paris, France,” she remained active in expatriate and artistic circles and was later noted as having spent two years studying in Europe. The couple periodically returned to Chicago to visit her family, who by the 1920s lived at 436 East 49th Street.

She was the daughter of Prof. Samuel I. Lee (d. 1936) and Nora Lee, sister of Clarence Lee and Mrs. Etta Schaffer, and aunt to Audrey Lee. Her husband, Opal D. Cooper (1891–1974), served with the 807th Pioneer Infantry in World War I and is buried at Long Island National Cemetery, New York.

As of publishing I have been unable to locate her last years , but her life reflected the promise and poise of Chicago’s early twentieth-century Black women’s intelligentsia—cultured, educated, and globally engaged.