Besse Cooper was born as Besse Berry Brown in Sullivan County in Tennessee on August 26, 1896. She was the third of eight children of Richard Brown and Angeline Berry. She graduated from East Tennessee State Normal School (now East Tennessee State University) in 1916. While a college student, she joined the so-called first wave of feminism in the United States, becoming a suffragette, joining the struggle for women's right to vote. The dedication of suffragettes like Besse, after some four decades of struggle by a fierce women's movement, resulted in the United States finally recognizing women as having the same right to vote as men, awarding them equal voting rights in all states. Besse's home state of Tennessee would prove the state which tipped the balance, being the 36th state needed to ratify and thus approve the Nineteenth Amendment be added to the U.S. Constitution in August 1920. She worked as a school teacher until the time of America's entrance to World War I in 1917, when she moved to Georgia. She taught in the Walton County town of Between until 1929, being the principal teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. She was married to Luther Cooper from 1924 until his death in 1963 with whom she had four children. She also had eleven grandchildren, thirteen great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren. In her final years, Cooper lived in a nursing home in Monroe, Georgia. In August 2012, a bridge in Between was named the "Besse Brown Cooper Bridge" in her honour.