Despite our long history as producers of knowledge, the idea of black women as intellectuals, thinking women, has been elusive if not impossible to imagine. The American Negro Academy (ANA), the fi rst learned society for persons of African descent in the United States and globally, was founded in Washington, DC, in March 1897 by Rev. Alexander Crummell, then seventyeight years old. Born in New York City and educated at London’s Queens College, Cambridge University, he was an Episcopalian minister, educator, writer, missionary, and one of the most prominent and visionary nineteenth-century black intellectuals. Though women were not barred from membership (whose numbers were limited to fi fty), it.
