Anne Margaret Cooke

Anne Cooke Reid (; October 6, 1907 – 1997) was an American stage director and academic. She founded and led theater departments at historically Black universities including Howard University, where she was the first chairwoman, and Spelman College, where she founded the first Black summer theater in the United States. A prominent figure in theater education, Cooke Reid was known to her students as "Queen Anne";

Early life and education Anna "Anne" Margaret Cooke was born on October 6, 1907, in Washington, DC. Her father was architect William Wilson Cooke. Her brother was noted chemist, Lloyd Miller Cooke. In 1944, she received her Ph.D. in theater from the Yale University School of Drama. In 1934, Cooke and these institutions organized the Atlanta University Summer Theater, the oldest continually operating summer theater Some of her other pupils at Howard included actresses Roxie Roker and Zaida Coles, stage director and playwright Shauneille Perry, and actor Graham Brown.

In May 1969, Cooke Reid coordinated a meeting at Haverford College along with psychologist Kenneth Clark of fourteen prominent African American intellectuals to advocate for racial integration. These participants, including author Ralph Ellison, United States circuit judge William H. Hastie, economist Phyllis Ann Wallace, and US secretary of housing and urban development Robert C. Weaver, were known as the Haverford Group.

Cooke Reid was a contributing author to the second volume of Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary (1971, Harvard University Press). When she retired from Howard, she was hired as senior preceptor for student affairs by University of California, Santa Cruz, and then as senior professor of theater at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She received the Mister Brown Award for her contributions to the theater arts from the National Conference on African American Theater in 1987.