Minnie Cooper

Minnie Cooper, the central character in "Dry September," is a Jefferson woman, "thirty-eight or thirty-nine" years of age (173); although the story is vague on this point, it is apparently her accusation of assault against Will Mayes the precipitates the lynching. She is described as "still on the slender side of ordinary looking, with a bright, faintly haggard manner and dress" (174). Never married, she lives with her mother and aunt, and has received local derision for her romantic travails and, more recently, her drinking. Toward the end of the story she suffers a nervous breakdown in a movie theater.