However, he faced discrimination on account of his race and soon left the position to enroll in Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Back in North Carolina he briefly taught school, but then was appointed to a position in the United States Treasury Department and returned to the capital, through the influence of John A. Hyman.

He resigned that position at the General Conference of the AME Zion church in 1892, to be succeeded by George W. Clinton.

Instead, that year Dancy took the position as editor of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Quarterly, which had been edited by Clinton.

[4] With the support of Booker T. Washington, he was appointed collector of customs at Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1897, serving the position under presidents Harrison and McKinley.

[4] That year, he was also involved in the founding of Coleman Manufacturing Company, the first cotton mill in the United States owned and operated by African Americans[5] In 1898, Dancy was a part of the founding of the National Afro-American Council, formed after the collapse of the National Afro-American League.

T. Thomas Fortune was initially elected president, but he declined the position and Alexander Walters was selected.

[1] He was a trustee of Livingstone College and served as chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Afro-American Press Association.

Honorary pallbearers were Robert Heberton Terrell, John E. Traylor, Whitefield McKinlay, S. M. Pierre, E. D. Williston, P. B. S. Pinchback, J. Finley Wilson, Simon Green Atkins, Emmett Jay Scott, D. C. Suggs, Thomas E. Jones, and Nathan Williams.