The African Abroad, or His Evolution in Western Civilization, by William Ferris

The ANA never admitted female members and allowed only two addresses to the group by female speakers in its three decades of existence. Grimke sympathizes with black women's plight, but his social and historical analysis can be read as depicting women as something like a commodity that should be shared fairly among men. Their still more ambitious application of history can be found in the work of William Ferris. For Ferris, it is these figures, great thinkers and religious leaders and not men of action who have been the real makers of the world's history.