Mary Annette Anderson

Who was Mary Annette Anderson?

Mary Annette Anderson was an American professor and the first African American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Anderson was born in Shoreham, Vermont, to William and Philomine Anderson. Her father, a farmer, was a freed slave originally from Virginia, and her mother was a Canadian immigrant of French and Native American ancestry. Anderson was educated at the Northfield School for Young Ladies in Northfield, Massachusetts, before entering Middlebury College in 1895. She graduated in 1899 as valedictorian, becoming the first African American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Following graduation from Middlebury, Anderson taught at Straight University in New Orleans before being appointed a professor of English grammar and history at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She married Walter Lucius Smith on August 7, 1907, and gave up teaching.