Jerome Gary Cooper was born on Oct. 2, 1936, in Lafayette, La., the eldest of six kids of Algernon Johnson Cooper and Gladys (Mouton) Cooper. He was born in his mom’s childhood house as a result of no hospital in Cellular, the place his mother and father lived, would ship a Black child.
His great-aunt Pearl Madison, the household matriarch, helped discovered a burial insurance coverage firm within the Nineteen Twenties, an vital trade within the Black group, and later helped discovered a funeral house. His father, often called A.J., was the longtime secretary-treasurer of the mixed enterprise, the Christian Benevolent Funeral Dwelling and Burial Affiliation.
Gary Cooper’s first marriage, to Charlesetta Ferrill, with whom he had three kids, resulted in divorce. A second marriage, to Gloria Giles, additionally resulted in divorce. In 1991, he married Beverly Martin. She survives him. Along with his daughter Joli Claire, so do his different kids, Patrick Charles Cooper and Gladys Shawn Cooper; seven grandchildren; a great-granddaughter; a sister, Dominque Cooper; and a brother, Algernon J. Cooper Jr., a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy.
Two different siblings, who led distinguished lives, died earlier: Mario Cooper, a nationwide Democratic operative, who raised consciousness of AIDS within the Black group, in 2015, and Peggy Cooper Cafritz, a collector and champion of Black artists, in 2018.
In 1974, Normal Cooper was elected as a Democrat to the Alabama Legislature; he was the primary African American from Cellular to serve within the state’s Home of Representatives since Reconstruction. A pragmatist in Montgomery, the state capital, he fashioned an alliance with Gov. George Wallace, the arch-segregationist, by agreeing to be considered one of his flooring leaders within the Home.
