Ferris held positions as Assistant President General of the UNIA-ACL and Associate Editor of the Negro World.
[1] 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.
[2] Over the coming decades, Ferris remained active among the scholars, editors, and activists of this first major African American learned society, refuting racist scholarship, promoting black claims to individual, social, and political equality, and studying the history and sociology of African American life.
In support of Washington were Robert H. Terrell, Bishop Alexander Walters, Dr. William Bruce Evans, J. H. Ewing, and Thompson, and those against were Ferris, Armond W. Scott, Lafayette M. Hershaw, T. M. Dent, Shelby James Davidson, and Mrs. Ida D.
[7] This controversy continued into the summer where important meetings in Louisville and Boston saw heated argument which even led to blows and Trotter's and Granville Martin's imprisonment.