Ms.Cooper not only has a impact on the arts community of Louisville but, as the Interim President of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, she too has a global impact. Her area of influence reaches from Louisville, Ky to Birmingham,AL and beyond thanks to her position with BCRI. In Birmingham, BCRI presents an in-depth look at the Civil Rights Movement from its establishment through today’s global struggle for universal human rights.The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) makes it its mission to ". . . promote civil and human rights worldwide through education.". BCRI is also a place of research, a teaching facility and an acknowledged learning center for people of all ages and backgrounds. Each year, BCRI reaches more than 140,000 individuals through tours and exhibitions as well as school and community outreach, public programs, special events, and archival collections.
Ms. Cooper is not only educating individuals on African American culture through her writing and her work with BCRI, she is also imploring people to explore African American heritage and culture. The way she uses the arts to provoke the thoughts of her readers/viewers to participate in the African American experience is innovative and extremely commendable.
With her move to Birmingham Ms. Cooper has not abandoned her arts background. In 2005 she was awarded the Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature by the Alabama State Council for the Arts and she also created the BCRI Juneteenth Arts Camp. Juneteenth is a festival held annually on the nineteenth of June within the African American community (especially in the southern states), to commemorate emancipation from slavery in Texas on that day in 1865.