Helen Appo Cook (July 21, 1837 – November 20, 1913) was a wealthy, prominent African-American community activist in Washington, D.C., and a leader in the women's club movement.

[1] Cook supported voting rights and was a member of the Niagara Movement, which opposed racial segregation and African American disenfranchisement.

[5] Because of William Appo's music career, the family lived in various cities, such as Baltimore and Philadelphia before settling permanently in New York.

Among my earliest recollections are the Sunday afternoon meetings, held at the home of Lucretia Mott, on Arch street, in Philadelphia... on one of those occasions...I heard that eloquent advocate of human freedom, the English abolitionist, George Thompson.

[3]As an adult, Cook attended the first suffrage convention held in Washington, D.C., in January 1869 and organized by the Universal Franchise Association.

[3] In 1864 the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children was incorporated by an act of the United States Congress to provide "suitable home, board, clothing, and instructions, and to bring them under Christian influences".

[8] The Association maintained a building for people without housing and orphans at Eighth and Euclid Streets, Northwest, with standing committees on Admission and Dismission, Household Management, Education, and Clothing.

[14] Cook shared the CWL's 1894 accomplishments that included raising $1,935 towards a permanent league home; hosting a series of public lectures for girls at a local high school and at Howard University; establishing CWL-sponsored classes in German, English literature and hygiene; the establishment of a sewing school and mending bureau with 88 students and ten teachers; the payment of tuition for two nursing students and part salary to hire a kindergartner teacher.

[15] CWL member Mary Church Terrell provided subsequent updates from Washington, D.C., league efforts to the newspaper.

Henry Hugh Proctor of First Congregational Church (Atlanta, Georgia), journalist and attorney Lafayette M. Hershaw, and Miss Minnie L. Perry, board member of the Carrie Steele Orphanage.

[24] Additionally, with Helen Cook still the elected president, the organization had the largest membership of any African American women's club in the country, according to historian Fannie Barrier Williams.

[1] Elected convention officers included Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, president; Helen A. Cook and Margaret Murray Washington, vice-presidents; Eliza Carter and Mrs. Hannah Smith, secretaries.

Women's rights activist and NWSA president Susan B. Anthony spoke at the hearing of "ignoramuses who held the elective franchise".

[4] Anthony suggested the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, which would give citizens the right to vote, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, humiliated [white American] women.

"[4] Anthony continued and "drew comparisons between many of the ex-slaves and the large number of women of high intellectual rank compelled to acknowledge their political inferiority to these".

[3] Cook appealed to Anthony to promote the cause of universal suffrage over disparaging "a noble manhood" or African American men.