Bertha Bradley is one of Durham’s leading activists, yet very few people know her name—but only because no one calls her by it. When she was little, her grandmother called her “Cookie.” The nickname stuck like glue.
Cookie, a lifelong Durham resident, has been instrumental in movements like Fight for $15 and a Union and the Union of Southern Service Workers, both of which strive to improve working conditions for service-industry workers in the South. Her passion about this subject comes from firsthand experience.
While raising her, Cookie’s grandparents imbued her with values that still serve as her moral compass. Not least was the importance of hard work. “It didn’t matter where you worked,” Cookie said. “It was how much you put into it.”
Her grandfather worked at Duke Power—even when it was dangerous to get to and from work. During the unrest stirred up by Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, he needed a pass just to leave the house.
Her grandmother’s job at Turnage’s Barbecue was equally instructive. Working hard was important, but so was fighting to make sure that work was justly rewarded.
“I used to watch her work so hard with no health insurance or benefits,” said Cookie. “I realized that my grandma was suffering, going to work with her legs wrapped up because she couldn’t afford a doctor, and that she shouldn’t have been suffering.”
Before her family moved to Durham’s West End, Cookie’s early life revolved around Fayetteville Street: Fayetteville Elementary, the Whitted School, the barbershop. Before long, she discovered a painful reality: No matter how smart and driven they were, she and her siblings wouldn’t be going to college. There was no way her grandparents could afford to send one kid there, much less eight.
When she was 14, she got a summer job at Pappy’s Pizza in Northgate Mall, and she didn’t stop working for the next 50 years.
Cookie’s next job involved deboning chickens at the Central Carolina Farmers Exchange on Gilbert Street. When her grandmother got sick, Cookie got a job at Jareh Healthcare, so she could learn how to take care of her.
Cookie’s grandmother once discouraged her, she recalled, from complaining about the inequities their family faced: “Cookie, you don’t need to get involved in that.”
“Let that girl alone,” she remembered her grandfather responding. “Let her fight. One day she’s going to make us proud. She’s not going to stand down and not open her mouth.”
It was a pivotal moment for Cookie. “That’s why I do what I do,” she said. “Because of my grandpa. He didn’t allow me not to be heard.”
Cookie joined the Communist Workers Party when she was 19. “That’s when I learned that I have a voice, that I have rights,” she said. “Listening to their words, how the system was broken and how it was doing us as people—not just Black people, but people period—I realized that I got to stand up and do something.”
Related stories
Her idealism was all but snuffed out by the events of November 3, 1979, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party killed five and injured 12 of her colleagues at the Greensboro Massacre. “I’m not gonna lie,” she said. “I got scared, and I stepped away because I didn’t want to jeopardize my family.”
For the next three decades she held a series of jobs that were high in stress and low in pay: heavy equipment operator, waitress, fast-food worker. She spent 22 of those years working at the Wendy’s near Hillside High School.
“I would take money out of my check to feed those kids,” she said. “Their education meant more to me than having a dollar in my pocket. They still contact me to this day to say thank you. You don’t know how much that means.”
Cookie credits her son Earl with reviving her activism by convincing her to attend a meeting for Fight for $15 and a Union in 2013. She’s been fighting to get the federal minimum wage increased ever since.
“To see the way society is doing these young folks today, it’s not fair. That’s why I fight so hard. These kids need the wisdom and the knowledge of the elders to let them know, ‘You got a voice. Don’t let nobody take it away from you.’”
mama cookie, labor organizer
In 2022, she helped found the Union of Southern Service Workers, which lobbies for higher wages and better workplace conditions for service industry workers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. She credits the union’s deputy director, Keith Bullard, with tweaking her nickname so that it matched her grand dame status. As the name suggests, Mama Cookie has mentored numerous young activists.
“To see the way society is doing these young folks today, it’s not fair,” she said. “That’s why I fight so hard. These kids need the wisdom and the knowledge of the elders to let them know, ‘You got a voice. Don’t let nobody take it away from you.’”
In 2023, Durham recognized her hard work by declaring April 3 Mama Cookie Day. “I accepted the award, but it ain’t about me,” she said. “It’s about the people. It’s our day.”
Now 67, Mama Cookie looks forward to the day when everyone who’s been priced out of the American Dream puts their collective foot down.
“I’m hoping to see the people rise,” she said. “When they rise up, I’m gonna be right there with them. We gonna rise, we gonna rise.”
To comment on this story, email [email protected].
