107-year-old voter praised by Obama dies

ATLANTA (AP) -- Ann Nixon Cooper, the Atlanta centenarian lauded by President Barack Obama in his election night speech last year, has died. She was 107.

Obama in his 2008 speech called Cooper an example of "the heartbreak and the hope" of the past century. He noted she'd been born at a time when women and blacks couldn't vote and lived to cast her ballot for the country's first black president.

Carl M. Williams Funeral Directors of Atlanta, which is handling funeral arrangements, confirmed that Cooper died on Monday.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that she died in the home she'd lived in since 1938. She was hospitalized recently for circulatory trouble.

Cooper would have turned 108 on Jan. 9.

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