Negro scholars, whose membership should be limited to forty and whose
purpose should be to foster scholarship and culture in the Negro race and
encourage budding Negro genius. He communicated with colored scholars in
America, England, Hayti and Africa. The result was that in March, 1897,
when McKinley was inaugurated, the most celebrated scholars and writers in
the Negro race for the first time assembled together in the Lincoln
Memorial Church and formally organized into a brotherhood of scholars.
Dunbar, the poet; DuBois, the sociologist; Scarborough, the Greek scholar;
Kelly Miller, the mathematician; Dr. Frank J. Grimke, the theologian;
Prof. John W. Cromwell, the historian; President R. R. Wright, Principal
Grisham, Prof. Love and Prof. Walter B. Hayson, noted educators; Prof. C.
C. Cook, the student of English literature, and Bishop J. Albert Johnson,
the brilliant preacher, were among those present. Bishop Tanner, of the A.
M. E. Church, and two or three other bishops were enrolled as members, and
such distinguished foreign Negroes as Prof. Harper were added as members.
The Academy seemed destined to do for the Negro race what the French
Academy did for France.

But Crummell soon died; DuBois was elected president. The industrial fad
swept over the country and men soon forgot the Academy. But Prof. John
Wesley Cromwell, the secretary, Dr. Francis J. Grimke, the treasurer,
Prof. Kelly Miller, Prof. C. C. Cook and Prof. John L. Love, of
Washington, D. C., did not despair. In December, 1902, the Academy
startled the country by a two days' session in which a series of papers
were read upon "The Religion of the Negro." The papers of Prof. Harper,
the Rev. Orishatukeh Faduma and Dr. Matthew Anderson attracted
considerable attention at the time. Later the "Literary Digest" noticed my
paper upon "A Historical and Psychological Account of the Genius and
Development of the Negro's Religion." In December, 1903, Archibald H.
Grimke was elected as President. The Academy took a new lease of life and
in March, 1905, a brilliant series of papers were read upon "The Negro and
the Elective Franchise." They were afterwards published in an eighty-five
page pamphlet and they remain today the best discussion upon Negro
Suffrage and Southern Disfranchisement.

The session of the Academy in December, 1906, was held in Howard
University, and at that session the audience that assembled in the small
chapel of Howard University listened to