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Biography/History:
Lawrence Owen Cooper, the third of four children of William S. and Malena Head Cooper, was born on a farm near Vicksburg, Warren County, Mississippi, on April 19, 1908. Cooper graduated from Culkin Academy in Vicksburg in 1925, and went on to attend Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Mississippi State University) from 1925 until he graduated in 1929 with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture. Cooper began work as a teacher of vocational agriculture and girls’ basketball coach at Leland High School, where he worked until 1935. During his time at Leland, he made a losing bid for a seat on the State Legislature. It was also during his tenure as a high school teacher that Cooper did some graduate-level work at the University of Southern California.
Cooper returned to school in 1935, and, by 1936, he had obtained a master’s degree in economics and political science from the University of Mississippi. Cooper moved to Jackson and took a job with the State Planning Board, where he worked for five years. Cooper was also involved with the Baptist Student Union of Millsaps College and Belhaven College, serving as their "self-appointed" head, and it was at one of the BSU’s functions that he met Elizabeth Thompson, a student at Louisiana Tech from Madison, Georgia. They were married in 1938. Cooper also received his bachelor of laws degree from Jackson School of Law (now Mississippi College School of Law) that same year.
Cooper was relieved of his duties at the State Planning Board by Governor Paul Johnson in 1940, and he was hired as the executive director of the State Farm Bureau. While serving as executive director of the Farm Bureau, Cooper was instrumental in implementing several programs, which would become Farm Bureau cornerstones. These included Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance, Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance, and the organization of Blue Cross health insurance.
The 1940s were a busy time for Cooper personally, as well as professionally. He was elected president of the State Baptist Training Union in 1947, a year in which he was also given the Progressive Farmer Award for his outstanding service to agriculture. His first daughter, Nancy Newton, was born in 1940; she was followed by Mary Carolyn in 1942, Lawrence Owen, Jr., in 1944, Elizabeth Thompson in 1946, and Frances Ann in 1947. Cooper also suffered a personal blow during this decade when his father died in California in 1949.
In response to the shortage of nitrogen-enriched fertilizer caused by World War II, Cooper left the Farm Bureau in 1948 and moved to Yazoo City to form Mississippi Chemical Corporation (MCC), the world’s first farmer-owned nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing operation. Cooper would serve as MCC’s chief executive officer for the next twenty-five years, during which time he would see the company become the largest fertilizer maker in the South and one of the most successful cooperative businesses in the world. MCC would eventually introduce Cooper to Jerry Clower, the well-known standup comedian, who started as a fertilizer salesman at MCC and remained a lifelong friend of Cooper.
Cooper’s interest in the Southern Baptist church continued to be a driving force throughout his life, and by 1954, he had been elected to the presidencies of the state YMCA, the Mississippi Baptist Convention, and the board of trustees of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He had also served as the vice-president of Mississippi Hospital and Medical Service, secretary of the Mississippi Commission on Hospital Care, president of the Mississippi State University Alumni Association, and member of the board of trustees at Mississippi Baptist Hospital. That same year Cooper was recognized for "Outstanding and Meritorious Service to Agriculture" by the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation. Cooper was named national campaign vice-chairman for the Red Cross in 1957. His business interests also expanded with the creation of First Mississippi Corporation (FMC) in 1957, a venture-capital corporation created by Cooper and LeRoy Percy.
During the turbulent 1960s, Cooper remained active in his secular and religious pursuits. Despite his political aspirations, Cooper opposed the prevailing racial climate and came out in favor of moderation and understanding during the social upheaval of the civil rights struggle. During this time he served on the board of Mississippi Action for Progress, a biracial panel created to administer Mississippi’s Headstart program, and sought to bring the program’s benefits to the maximum number of poor. It was also during this period that Cooper started many of the missionary efforts to which he would devote much of the rest of his life.
After a 1961 trip to the western United States, Cooper saw a need for support among the small churches of the region. With the help of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board, Cooper started Mississippi Pioneer Missions, a program that provided personal assistance to pastors, financial and physical help for churches, and evangelical teams for both.
Cooper also became interested in India during this period, a time in which that country was in the midst of a disastrous food shortage. Cooper combined the two areas of his expertise with the creation of Universal Concern Foundation, an American company that shipped supplies and livestock to Universal Concern in India. Not only did he help ship relief supplies to India, he also acted as the motivating force behind the construction of a $100 million cooperative fertilizer plant, the largest in the world at that time, a project that brought him the inaugural award from the National Council of Cooperatives for "exceptional contributions to international cooperative development." Workers on the plant did double duty as missionaries because the Indian government would allow Christian missionaries to remain in the country only for very short periods of time. Another facet of Cooper’s India project was the All India Prayer Fellowship, an organization which trained, supplied, and provided for the support of native Indian preachers who traveled to all parts of India. Cooper became known in India as William Carey II, named after the nineteenth century Baptist missionary. A similar project called the Agricultural Missions Foundation was formed in 1969 to send missionaries, livestock, and supplies to needy countries around the world.
Cooper continued to accumulate honors at home. Although some of his interest had shifted to the problems of other countries, he, along with Eudora Welty, received the First Federal of Jackson Foundation Award at the seventh annual presentation in 1965, and in 1966, Cooper was elected president of the Mississippi Economic Council.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) rewarded Cooper for his years of dedication to the denomination by electing him as its president in 1972; he was the first layman to hold the office in fourteen years and the first Mississippian to preside over the convention while living in the state. Cooper’s focus during his two one-year terms as SBC president was lay involvement in missions, and following his election, his first book, which is composed of several of Cooper’s speeches and entitled The Future Is Before Us, was published by Broadman Press in 1972. On the heels of Cooper’s election as SBC president came another milestone in his life; in 1973, after twenty-five years as CEO, Cooper retired from Mississippi Chemical Corporation, although he remained attached to the company as a consultant.
The 1970s saw Cooper achieve national prominence, not only as a religious leader, but also as a friend of Presidential hopeful Jimmy Carter. Cooper had become acquainted with Carter, also a Baptist, many years prior to Carter’s bid for the presidency, and Cooper won Carter’s gratitude during the 1976 campaign by coming out in support of Carter during the furor created by the interview Carter did with Playboy magazine. After Carter’s eventual election, Cooper was first named to the President’s Personnel Advisory Committee, an eleven-member council that advised President Carter on potential government appointees, and later to the Federal Farm Credit Board. President Carter also spent a night with the Cooper family when he came to Yazoo City for a town meeting held in the Yazoo City High School gymnasium in July of 1977. Cooper served on the Committee for Arms Control and Disarmament in the following year.
Cooper continued to crusade against various cultural ills throughout the 1970s and the early 80s, serving on a fifty-member ad hoc committee at the National Conference of Religious and Lay Leaders on the Impact of Alcohol and Other Drugs on Contemporary Life and as a member of the National Coalition Against Pornography. Professionally Cooper began working on plans for a 200 million-dollar paper mill to be built in northern Mississippi. Cooper also started a new missionary organization in 1983 called Books for the World, created to collect religious books and ship them to places around the globe where such books were scarce. Cooper received one final honor from the Mississippi Baptist Convention in 1985, when he was named Layman of the Century among Mississippi Baptists. Cooper died of cancer on November 8, 1986.
Scope and Content:
This collection contains the incoming and outgoing correspondence and other papers and records documenting Owen Cooper’s tenure as executive director of the Mississippi Farm Bureau from 1940 to 1948; chief executive officer of Mississippi Chemical Corporation from 1948 to 1973; and Southern Baptist Convention president from 1972 to 1974. It also contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and other papers and records documenting his many personal interests, including the various Southern Baptist missionary activities to which he devoted much of his life.
The experiences of Cooper as executive director of the State Farm Bureau; as chief executive officer of Mississippi Chemical Corporation; and as president of the Southern Baptist Convention are revealed in his personal files and in the files he created during his two terms as SBC president. These files include letters from Mississippi Governor Theodore Bilbo; United States Presidents Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon; actress and ambassador Shirley Temple Black; and United States Senators John C. Stennis and James O. Eastland. Also included are letters concerning Cooper’s possible candidacy for Mississippi governor; Mississippi and National Democratic Party politics; and Cooper’s appointments to President Jimmy Carter’s Personnel Advisory Committee and his Arms Control and Disarmament Committee.
Other correspondence and records reveal Cooper’s longtime interest in the Mississippi and Southern Baptist Conventions; various missionary projects including the Agricultural Missions Foundation, an organization which helped relieve various food shortages around the world by sending livestock and supplies; Universal Concern Foundation, a non-profit organization formed to provide food and Christian evangelists for India; and Books for the World, an organization to collect Christian literature and send it to countries where such material was in short supply. Cooper’s role as a moderating voice during the civil rights movement and his involvement with Mississippi Action for Progress, a biracial panel that administered the Mississippi’s troubled Headstart program, are also documented.
For more specific information about the contents of the Owen Cooper Papers, the researcher may consult the series description that follows. There is also an appendix, which contains the box and folder list for the collection.
Series Identification/Description:
Subgroup 1: Personal Papers and Records.
This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and miscellany documenting Cooper’s early life, including his last years of high school in Warren County and his undergraduate career at Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College. It also contains school material, diaries, photographs, and scrapbooks. Each subseries is arranged alphabetically and chronologically thereunder. Of particular interest are photographs in box 2 that document college life in the 1920s.
Boxes 1-2; 161; 164-165
This series consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence and other papers and records documenting Cooper’s early career, specifically his work with the State Planning Board and Southern Farm Bureau. The three Personal Files series were the backbone of Cooper’s filing system at the time they were created; therefore, there is some overlap between these series and others from the periods. File arrangement is alphabetical. Of particular interest are a letter from Theodore Bilbo in box 3, folder 46, correspondence concerning Cooper’s upcoming wedding in box 4, folder 17, and information about Cooper’s campaign for the Mississippi legislature in box 6, folder 13.
Boxes 3-7; 162
This series consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence and other papers and records documenting Cooper’s personal interests from the 1940s to the 1970s. As was previously stated, there is some overlap between this series and others from the period. File arrangement is alphabetical by subject or file title. Of particular interest are a letter from Hubert Humphrey in box 17, folder 2a and Cooper family newsletters, including one that announces Cooper’s election to the Southern Baptist Convention presidency in 1972.
Boxes 8-36
This series consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence and other papers and records documenting Cooper’s personal interests from the 1960s to the 1980s, as well as slides. Once again, there is some overlap between this series and others from the period. File arrangement is alphabetical by subject or file title. Of particular interest are genealogical material in box 43 and pictures of Cooper with the following: Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr., Dr. Jonas Salk, Jerry Clower, Pope Paul VI, President Richard Nixon, the Reverend Billy Graham, and President Jimmy Carter. A copy of the controversial interview President Carter gave to Playboy magazine may be found in box 50, folder 5.
Boxes 37-60
This series contains diaries that chronicle Cooper’s day-to-day activities and some of his travels. File arrangement is chronological. Of particular interest is Cooper’s description of a 1981 trip to Eastern Europe.
Box 61
This series contains manuscripts of Cooper’s book projects, including The Future is Before Us, Managing Your Money in the Senior Years, and Celso and Alice, an unpublished manuscript on which Cooper worked for a number of years. The series also contains some manuscripts by others who had submitted them to Cooper for his perusal. It also includes a book of poems Cooper wrote in the 1920s that was published as a gift to him by his family. Files are arranged by book title, and the series is subdivided into three sections: Celso and Alice, which includes material related to an unpublished manuscript of that title written by Cooper; Managing Your Money in the Senior Years, which contains files concerning the book Cooper wrote for Broadman Press in the early 1980s; and a miscellaneous section, which contains material relevant to additional publications written by Cooper and others.
Boxes 62-63
This series contains typescripts and manuscripts of some of the speeches Cooper made during his career. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Boxes 64-67
This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and miscellany related to Cooper’s death and subsequent memorial activities. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Box 68
This series contains material related to Cooper’s involvement with Mississippi State University. Most of the series is composed of incoming and outgoing correspondence dealing with Cooper’s work with the MSU Alumni Association and the organization of Class of 1929 reunions from 1934 to 1984. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Boxes 69-70
Subgroup 2: Business Papers and Records.
This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and other material related to Cooper’s early work with the State Planning Board. The series is composed of Mississippi county files and miscellany. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Box 71
This series contains minutes and records of meetings and incoming and outgoing correspondence and other material related to First Mississippi Corporation, a venture capital corporation. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 72-73
This series contains minutes of meetings and incoming and outgoing correspondence and other material related to Mississippi Industrial and Special Services, an organization that provided low-cost housing for the poor throughout the state. It also contains files generated by Cooper’s work with the state Office of Economic Opportunity. The series is subdivided into three sections: correspondence, meetings and minutes, and miscellany. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 74-75
Subgroup 3: Political Papers and Records.
This series contains minutes and records of meetings and incoming and outgoing correspondence and other material related to Mississippi Action for Progress, the biracial panel formed to administer Mississippi’s Head Start Program in the 1960s. Files have been subdivided into three categories: clippings and printed material, correspondence, and miscellany; arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 76-78
This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence related to Cooper’s contacts with President Jimmy Carter including articles, campaign material, Personnel Advisory Committee records, and documents related to President Carter’s stay with the Cooper family in Yazoo City in July of 1977. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Box 79; 161
Subgroup 4: Religious Papers and Records.
This series contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and other material generated during Cooper’s Mississippi Baptist Convention presidency and his involvement with the convention throughout his life. Of particular interest are the files related to the McCall affair, a 1949 investigation of alleged misappropriation of funds by a MBC employee. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Box 80
This series contains minutes of meetings, incoming and outgoing correspondence, committee records, seminary records, and state files created during Cooper’s lifelong involvement with the Southern Baptist Convention. The majority of this series comes from Cooper’s two terms as SBC president from 1972 to 1974. Of particular interest are a letter from President Richard Nixon in box 88, folder 2, and a 1971 letter from President Carter in box 91, folder 4. Files are subdivided into five categories: correspondence, meetings, state and national files, and seminaries; arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 81-97
This series contains records and correspondence related to Cooper’s involvement in a variety of missionary projects. Files are arranged by subject into eleven subseries by organization or person.
This subseries contains minutes and other records of meetings, incoming and outgoing correspondence, financial information, and miscellany related to Cooper’s various projects in India. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 98-110
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and miscellany related to the Agricultural Missions Foundation, an organization founded in 1969 that shipped food, livestock, and other supplies to countries to help relieve various world food shortages. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Boxes 111-113
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence, manuscripts, newsletters, and other records generated by Cooper’s longtime contact with the Arthur Blessitt Evangelistic Association. Blessitt was an independent missionary who started out with a mission on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, California. He later carried a large cross across the United States and several other countries, including Spain, England, and India. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Box 114
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence, newsletters, and miscellany. Wilkerson was another independent missionary whom Cooper supported and who mainly worked in Honduras. File arrangement is alphabetical.
Box 115
This subseries contains minutes of meetings, incoming and outgoing correspondence, country files, and miscellany related to several meetings of the Baptist World Alliance. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 116-122
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence, financial information, tour information, printed material, and miscellany concerning the Crusade of the Americas, a mission effort that spread the Southern Baptist faith throughout the Western Hemisphere. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 123-125
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence, country files, and miscellany related to the Pan American Union of Baptist Men, an ongoing crusade that grew from the Crusade of the Americas. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 126-129
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and miscellany between Cooper and David Gomes, a Brazilian preacher whose radio show was estimated to reach more people than any other broadcast of its kind in the world at that time. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Box 130
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence about Operation 30-10, a missionary effort in which the First Baptist Church of Yazoo City sought to help establish thirty new churches within ten years. Included are city, state, and country files, and miscellany related to various missionary efforts of the FBCYC, Cooper’s home church. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 131-135
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and miscellany related to Mississippi Pioneer Missions and some foreign mission efforts. MPM was a missionary effort that provided personal assistance to pastors, financial and physical help for churches, and evangelical teams for both. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 136-146
This subseries contains incoming and outgoing correspondence and miscellany related to Cooper’s participation on a fifty-member ad hoc committee that met in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1979. File arrangement is alphabetical and chronological thereunder.
Boxes 147-148
Subgroup 5: Audio and Video Material.
This series consists of material in a variety of audio formats related to many different aspects of Cooper’s career. The material is subdivided into six categories: interviews, conventions, lectures, meetings and events, programs, and miscellany. The items are arranged alphabetically and chronologically thereunder.
Boxes 149-156; 160
This series contains film and video records related to Cooper’s life and interests. It has been subdivided into five groups: family, travel, interviews, news reports, and miscellany; item arrangement is alphabetical, with the exceptions of family and travel, which are arranged chronologically.
Boxes 157-159; 163
Appendix 1: Box and Folder List is available in A Guide to the Owen Cooper Papers, Archival Catalogue No. 2, which was published by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1999.