J. Samuel Cook - Career

Career

Cook began his career as a writer under the tutelage of playwright Ron Milner. As a journalist, Cook has written for The Black Collegian and Black College Wire and is a former blogger for the Clarion Ledger. He has participated in the New York Times Journalism Institute and the National Association of Black Journalists Student Projects Program. Cook is a former G.E.D. instructor for Claiborne County, Mississippi and served as an intern for the Tavis Smiley Foundation from 1998-2005. He also frequently writes for Preach2me.com, a religion and spirituality Web site.

Cook has given over seventy scholarly lectures on issues pertaining to race, culture, art and spirituality. Cook comes from a well-known black middle-class family of educators and is the cousin of educator and former Dillard University president Samuel DuBois Cook and entered the educational arena in order to follow his footsteps. His great-aunt, Jessie Randall, was the first African-American graduate of Mary Manse College in Toledo, Ohio and served as Middle School Supervisor for the Department of Guidance and Counseling in Detroit Public Schools. She was also the first black woman to play classical piano for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. His grandmother, The Rev. Cassandra Cook-Butler, was a minister, social worker and pre-school teacher. His great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, both named Samuel Cook, were both engineers and his great-grandmother was a nurse. He is a descendant of Mary Belle Thompson, a well-known minister who founded the Pinewood Tabernacle Church in Toledo, Ohio. His great-uncle is the Rev. Dr. Richard M. Randall, pastor of the Church of the New Covenant in Detroit, MI.

In 2012 Samuel Cook joined the Obama for America campaign as coordinator for Louisiana.

Cook has an adoptive son who lives in New Orleans.