  Booker T. Washington died in 1915, W.E.B. Du Bois nearly half a century later (…on the evening before the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom as hundred of thousands of Negroes and other supporters converged on the nation’s capital to press for full civil and economic rights). The deaths of both brought to a close their long reigns of Black male leadership prominence, and predominance, in various arenas. Still, they were far from being the only leaders of their people. For as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, Black women were again substantial contributors to the intellectual explorations, organizational work, and local, national, and international movements seeking freedom and enhanced existence for African and African-descendant peoples. They were, as well, influential on Black male leadership. In 1897, for example, Du Bois accepted an invitation from Alexander Crummell to become a member of the American Negro Academy to share in the critical work of developing understandings of the deteriorating situation of Black people in the nation, made worse by widespread racially-motivated violence, in order to develop and implement strategies to protect and advance the race. (Du Bois offered his proposal in “The Conservation of Races,” the second Occasional Paper delivered to the group.) Due largely to Crummell’s objections, Black women were not initially allowed to become members of the Academy. However, while Crummell was a substantial influence on Du Bois, he (Du Bois) was also influenced by Ana Julia Cooper who advised his thinking on a number of matters regarding which he conversed with his male colleagues in the Academy. Other women—Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Jane Adams—also exerted critical influence on Du Bois through their ideas, their organizational work, and their personal relations with him.