[1] The society was founded as a result of the Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in 1956[2] based on the idea of the French fr:Société africaine de culture.
In June 1957, the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) was officially founded by five African-American intellectuals: the political scientist and civil rights activist John A. Davis, historian and social scientist Horace Mann Bond (1904–1972), professor of French and future American ambassador Will Mercer Cook (1903–1987), philosopher William T. Fontaine (1909–1968) and James Ivy, editor of the NAACP's Crisis.
This aim was pursued through organising exhibitions, lectures, music performances, and conferences in the United States (primarily New York) and Africa (occasionally).
AMSAC published the volumes Pan-Africanism Reconsidered and Southern Africa in Transition, edited versions of the papers and discussions of AMSAC-sponsored international conferences in, respectively, I960 and I963.
AMSAC had received federal tax exemption the year prior and thus large grants became available to the organization for specific projects from various entities.