Destiny and Race · Selected Writings, 1840-1898

A major 19th-century reformer and intellectual, Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) was the first black American to receive a degree from Cambridge University. Upon graduation, he sailed to Liberia, where from 1853 to 1872 he worked as a farmer, educator, small business operator, and Episcopal missionary. Returning to America in 1873, he established St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., serving as its pastor until 1894. Crummell remained active in the black community throughout his later years and in 1897 founded the American Negro Academy, which he intended as a challenge to the power of Booker T. Washington's accommodationist philosophy.