(Editor’s Note: Jena resident Faye Monson has provided us with a copy of a paper written by her grandfather, S. H. Cooper, who lived and operated a carpenter and blacksmith shop near Rhinehart, where he made caskets and barrels during the late 1800’s. He was born April 1, 1865, just a month before the Civil War ended on May 9, 1865. President Abraham Lincoln had issued the emancipation proclamation on January 1, 1863, just two years before S. H. Cooper was born. He attended Mt. Vernon Baptist Church and had to travel by horseback. S. H. Cooper never attended public school, but self-taught himself how to read and write. He built a school house for the Black children of the Rhinehart Community. He had beautiful hand writing and could do calligraphy. According to family members, S. H. Cooper was a Christian man and kept up with everything in the community and people would come to him for advice. Monson said one of her grandpa’s sayings, since he was born on April Fool’s Day, was: “While being born on April 1, he could act a fool all he wanted to on that day!” S. H. Cooper penned the following article which he titled, “What is the Soul of Man?” It is believed he wrote the column in June 1920, when he was 55 years old. He died in October 1952 at age 87.)
