Negro Academy

The American Negro Academy (ANA) was an organization that supported African-American scholarship. It was organized in Washington DC, in 1897.^[1] The organization was the first organization in the United States dedicated to African-American scholars, and it existed from 1897 to 1928.^[2]

Founders of the organization included Alexander Crummell, John Wesley Cromwell, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Walter B. Hayson, and Kelly Miller (scientist). Presidents of the academy included W. E. B. Du Bois and Archibald H. Grimke.^[3]

The organization was formed to provide an alternative to Booker T. Washington's approach to education and scholarship. Washington's Tuskegee Machine, based on the Atlanta compromise, emphasized vocational and industrial training, and discouraged liberal arts. The ANA was supported by African-Americans were opposed to the segregation and discrimination inherent in the Atlanta compromise, and which were struggling for civil rights.

See also

• Talented Tenth

Footnotes

References

• American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, Issues 1-22, Ayer Publishing, 1970
• Moss, Alfred A., The American Negro Academy: voice of the talented tenth, Louisiana State University Press, 1981, ISBN 9780807106990
• Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, Alexander Crummell: a study of civilization and discontent, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp 365-366: reproduces the organization's bylaws.
• Peress, Maurice, Dvořák to Duke Ellington: a conductor explores America's music and its African American Roots, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp 54-65.
• Smith, Jessie Carney, and Wynn, Linda T., Freedom facts and firsts: 400 years of the African American civil rights experience, Visible Ink Press, 2009