  His first marriage ended when Elston died in 1878, after which he married Jennie Simpson in 1880. Late in his life he held a lectureship at Howard University, though his most enduring contribution to black American letters was his co-founding of the American Negro Academy in Washington, DC, in 1897. He helped assemble a number of leading black intellectuals—including Du Bois and, much later, Locke—to publish research on problems facing blacks. During its three decades of existence twenty-two papers appeared. Its disbanding in the 1920s coincided with the Negro Renaissance in Harlem, the rise of Marcus Garvey, and the turn to pragmatism and relativism in American thought.