Mary Annette Anderson (July 27, 1874 – May 2, 1922) was an American professor of grammar and history and the first African-American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Her father, a farmer, was a freed slave originally from Virginia, and her mother was a Canadian immigrant of French and Native American ancestry.

[1] Her younger brother, William John Anderson Jr., became the second African American to serve in the Vermont General Assembly.

She graduated in 1899 as valedictorian, becoming the first African-American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

She taught at Howard for seven years before marrying Walter Lucius Smith, principal of Paul Laurence Dunbar School in Washington, D.C., on August 7, 1907, and gave up teaching.