After graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1925, Cooke moved to Harlem and took a job reporting for The Crisis, the preeminent magazine for and by Black people, published by the NAACP during this period. Cooke was an editorial assistant for Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, renowned scholar, writer, and civil rights pioneer, and founder and editor of The Crisis.
Cooke was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance, becoming friends with the likes of Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Richard Wright, among others. Cooke — and many Black luminaries over the years — called home the legendary 409 Edgecombe Avenue, a hub of social and political activity during the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. She moved there in the 1930s and remained for the rest of her life.
After The Crisis, Cooke went on to report for the New York Amsterdam News, one of the country’s oldest Black newspapers. It was during her time as a reporter for this paper that Cooke really began her work as an organizer and activist. She helped organize a labor union at the Amsterdam News, which was “one of the first labor unions organized by a group of journalists anywhere, and likely the first walkout ever staged by a group of journalists over labor issues,” Wallace tells Teen Vogue.
It was on the Amsterdam News picket line that Cooke was invited to join the Communist Party, and she remained a member of that organization for the rest of her life. During this period, though the global reputation of communism was dominated by international criticism of the USSR for human rights violations, the Communist Party USA was at the vanguard of fighting the interconnected web of racism and capitalist oppression. The group argued that Black people living in the South had a right to self-determination in direct opposition to Jim Crow segregation laws, which denied them their basic human rights. Also at this time, the Communist Party USA focused on organizing workers to fight for the expansion and protection of their rights, with particular attention on the most marginalized racial and economic groups.
After an 11-week strike and a few stints in jail for picketing, Cooke and her colleagues secured victory through union recognition and a raise from Amsterdam News' management. Roger Streitmatter, a historian who profiled Cooke, believes this is the first time that Black workers were involved in a labor action against a Black employer and won.