He persuaded Jesse E. Moorland to donate his large private library on blacks in Africa and the United States to Howard University and it became the foundation for his Negro-Americana Museum and Library center. He was a participant in the March 5, 1897 meeting to celebrate the memory of Frederick Douglass, which founded the American Negro Academy led by Alexander Crummell. Until the organization was discontinued in 1928, Miller remained one of the most active members of this first major African American learned society, refuting racist scholarship, promoting black claims to individual, social, and political equality, and publishing early histories and sociological studies of African American life. Miller gained his well-known national importance from his involvement in another movement led by W. E. B. Du Bois. He showed intellectual leadership during the conflict between the "accommodations" of Booker T. Washington and the "radicalism" of the growing civil rights. Miller was known in two ways to the public. On African-American education policy, Miller aligned himself with neither the "radicals" — Du Bois and the Niagara Movement — nor the "conservatives" — the followers of Booker T. Washington. Miller sought a middle way, a comprehensive education system that would provide for "symmetrical development" of African-American citizens by offering both vocational and intellectual instruction. In February 1924, Miller was elected chairman of the Negro Sanhedrin, a civil rights conference held in Chicago that brought together representatives of 61 African-American organizations to forge closer ties and attempt to craft a common program for social and political reform. He believed that blacks should favor free market rather than government or union power, stating: The capitalist has but one dominating motive, the production and sale of goods. The race or color of the producer counts but little.... The capitalist stands for an open shop which gives to every man the unhindered right to work according to his ability and skill. In this proposition the capitalist and the Negro are as one. He was critical of racially biased policing, saying in 1935 that police violence harmed community trust: "Too often the policeman's club is the only instrument of the law with which the Negro comes into contact. This engenders in him a distrust and resentful attitude toward all public authorities and law officers". Written works Miller was a prolific writer of articles and essays which were published in major newspapers, magazines, and several books, including Out of