Retired Cornell University Professor Alice Hanson Cook, a lifetime feminist and supporter of equal rights for working women, died February 7 at her home in Ithaca, NY. Professor Cook was 94 years old.
Born in Alexandria, VA. in 1903, Cook attended Northwestern University, where she co-founded the Student Liberal League and became known as one of “the 38,” whom the Chicago Tribune branded as unwelcome at Northwestern due to their pacifist views.
Alice Cook graduated from Northwestern in 1924. She went on to work for a social service agency in St. Louis, taught at a cooperative farm in Arkansas, organized textile workers and became affiliated with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, and the Marine and Shipbuilding Workers.
Cook served as visiting expert on labor education with the office of Military Government in Germany in the late 1940’s, and was chief of the Adult Education Section of the United States High Commission in Germany from 1950 to 1952.
Cook joined the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell in 1952 and began teaching labor history in 1954. Cook was later appointed as the university’s first ombudsman. Jennie Farley, a Cornell professor of industrial and labor relations, said “She was not only interested, but concerned in every aspect of the working woman’s life …. Alice made it clear that these issues were universal in their importance and that they affected every woman no matter where she lived and worked.”
The establishment of Cook’s Grove in Cornell’s quadrangle along with a plaque that reads “Teacher, Feminist, First University Ombudsman,” marked Cook’s retirement in 1972.
A prolific author, Cook wrote on many issues, including: unions, labor relations and sex discrimination. Her works include, Working Mother: A Survey of Problems and Programs in Nine Countries, Woman and Trade Unions in Eleven Industrialized Countries, and her autobiography, A Lifetime in Labor, which will be published this spring by the Feminist Press of New York.
he establishment of Cook’s Grove in Cornell’s quadrangle along with a plaque that reads “Teacher, Feminist, First University Ombudsman,” marked Cook’s retirement in 1972. A prolific author, Cook wrote on many issues, including: unions, labor relations and sex discrimination. Her works include, Working Mother: A Survey of Problems and Programs in Nine Countries, Woman and Trade Unions in Eleven Industrialized Countries, and her autobiography, A Lifetime in Labor, which will be published this spring by the Feminist Press of New York.
