Ann Nixon Cooper, the Atlanta centenarian whose name Barack Obama invoked in his post-election speech as a symbol of America's struggles and progress, died Monday. She was 107.

In his victory speech in Chicago, Obama said of Cooper, who was African-American: "She was born just a generation past slavery ... when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

Cooper was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1902 and grew up in Nashville with uncles and an aunt who worked as domestic help for wealthy whites.