Chapter 9: Social Science, Ambition, and Tuskegee
A. They move to Atlanta where DuBois will plunge himself into teaching and especially research -- his ambitious Atlanta University Studies. But his wife, Nina, hated the South with its raw racism, lack of educational,recreational, medical facilities for blacks.
B. Atlanta University was isolated -- "an ivory tower of race." "Matthew Arnold's precepts guided their pedagogy -- the 'disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known throughout the world.'" (only in Georgia)
1. It was an integrated campus, faculty and students, which was unusual and raised the ire of white Atlantans -- "...the school had been subjected for several years to an almost total boycott by white Atlanta, its faculty treated as pariahs and its students periodically intimidated." (p. 214) the Georgia legislature took steps to cripple it financially.
a.) Notes what was an article of faith in the 1890s as it concerned educating Negroes. See, top p. 215.
C. DuBois was quite a campus character with his cane, and he was a stickler for punctuality and abiding by the rules -- no smoking on campus. As a rule, the brighter students were attracted to him and several research papers were done by students under his direction.
D. In setting up the Atlanta University series, DuBois had to challenge the bias of the university president and other white professors who saw the Negro's moral failings as the problem, not discrimination.
1. Lewis comments on several of these studies: "The Negro in Business," "The Negro Artisan," "The Negro Church," "The Negro American Family," etc.-- these broke new ground in terms of methodology, data collection, and historical analysis, drawing connections to slavery and even pre-slavery days.
2. Couple interesting points: (a) compiled much-needed data on public and college education for Negroes: The disclosure that there were 2,600 Negroes with college degrees was met with disbelief when DuBois testified in Washington, D.C. about this. (b) documented the wholesale exclusion of African Americans in the union movement. And they did all this -- conferences, publications, even DuBois's salary -- on a shoestring $5,000 budget.
E. This work and speaking engagements placed DuBois in the vanguard of social science scholarship in America. Yet the South, with its rabid racism, was unchanged. It appeared that all this knowledge, this scientific truth, repeatedly broadcast, was apparently impotent to ameliorate racist collective behavior. (I would note that this is similar to Dr. King's realization of the limits of moral persuasion and education.)
1. DuBois realized it was not enough to expose ignorance, tell the truth, but you needed to induce people to act on the truth, implement it politically. In this context, Lewis recalls a ghastly lynching in the summer of 1899, the Wilmington, NC riot. And most devastating personally -- the death of his son, due in large part to the lack of black doctors and the unwillingness of white doctors to treat black patients. Nina was devastated. Imagine, being called "niggers" when they walked behind the horse-drawn cart carrying their son's coffin to the Atlanta train station!
F. DuBois meets Washington on a fund-raising tour in New England. Washington was well-disposed toward him and even made a vague offer of employment at Tuskegee.
1. DuBois had earlier even defended Washington at an Afro-American Council meeting in Chicago in 1898. Washington had spoken out about some racial injustices. They also collaborated in defeating a bill in Georgia that would have restricted voting rights for blacks.
2. Nonetheless, DuBois interpreted Washington's offer of a job at Tuskegee as a subtrefuge designed to co-op him. But DuBois had his sights set on becoming a superintendent of colored schools in Washington, DC, but Booker T. Washington put his weight behind someone else who got the job. DuBois felt betrayed by the "Tuskegee Machine."
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That brings us up to Chapter 10, where I will pick up tomorrow (Tues., 3/1) and try to do better getting through several chapters. We'll see how close we can get to finishing volume 1 of his biography by the end of this week.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Lecture Notes
Given my utter failure to make much progress in commenting on the first volume of DuBois's biography, I am going to start blogging some of my commentary. I will do some today and probably also on Monday. Keep in mind that whatever notes I post on the blog will be potential material to make up final exam questions at the end of the semester. I trust some of this will also be useful in shedding light on the reading, and you are also welcome to use this material as a basis for journal entries or it may be relevant in other contexts. So, you might want to print this out and insert it along with your other notes.
We left off in the middle of Chapter 8:
D. In a speech at a gathering of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Nov. 19, 1897), he urged the great universities to embark on studies of the American Negro -- something he, of course, would do in "The Philadelphia Negro" and many later studies under the auspices of Atlanta University.
1. He did one such study for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study."
2. DuBois was very much committed to the research enterprise -- gathering facts, data, in contrast to mere theorizing, or moralizing, which Lewis notes he also did. "Yet along with moralizing came the first documented sociological insights..." (p. 196) See also, bottom, p. 195.
E. He was asked to write a piece for "The Atlantic Monthly" (summer, 1897) on the state of Negro America -- "Strivings of the Negro People," which clearly foreshadows some of his most famous passages in "The Souls Of Black Folk" (1903). Eg., "How does it feel to be a problem?" (the Negro problem, that is); "Twoness" or double-consciousness, being American and Negro, see bottom p. 199 & pp.200-201.
F. Lewis makes a nice observation about the significance of "The Philadelphia Negro" for the field of sociology specifically. Very high praise. "The Philadelphia Negro was a remarkable example of the new empiricism that was fundamentally transforming the social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although DuBois's novel sociological insights would soon become conventional wisdom, as one of the last books of the nineteenth century, the Philadelphia study would be a breakthrough achievement, an important and virtually solitary departure from the hereditarian theorizing of the times...." (pp. 201-202)
1. DuBois even wrote an unpublished essay, "Sociology Hesitant" (1900), which challenged the sociological establishment. He defined the field as -- "sociology,...is the science that seeks (to measure) the limits of chance in human conduct." (p. 203)
2. Lewis notes the influence of "The Philadelphia Negoro" on some works from black sociologists -- E. Franklin Frazier's family studies, "Black Metropolis" by Horace Cayton & St. Clair Drake, not to mention Myrdal's, "An American Dilemma," and Moynihan's family study (Myrdal & Moynihan were white of course). (I would also include, Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged" (1987))
3. Lewis notes that most of the reviewers of "The Philadelphia Negro" virtually ignored DuBois's race-class-economic analysis of the plight of blacks in Philadelphia, especially how powerful race prejudice was.
4. Lewis closes the chapter with a couple interesting observations about both DuBois's class and race analysis. First, see pp. 209-210, and second: "When DuBois finally wound up this catalogue of discrimination, the causal linkage of race and class to economics was unmistakable. DuBois had ended by driving home his point, writing feelingly: 'For thirty years and more Philadelphia has said to its black children: 'Honesty, efficiency and talent have little to do with your success; if you work hard, spend little and are good you may earn your bread and butter at those sorts of work which we frankly confess we despise; if you are dishonest and lazy, the State will furnish your bread free.'" (p. 210) (Such biting sarcasm is worthy of Malcolm X.)
_______________________
That brings us to Chapter 9. I'll pick up there over the weekend, or on Monday, so look for that.
We left off in the middle of Chapter 8:
D. In a speech at a gathering of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Nov. 19, 1897), he urged the great universities to embark on studies of the American Negro -- something he, of course, would do in "The Philadelphia Negro" and many later studies under the auspices of Atlanta University.
1. He did one such study for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia: A Social Study."
2. DuBois was very much committed to the research enterprise -- gathering facts, data, in contrast to mere theorizing, or moralizing, which Lewis notes he also did. "Yet along with moralizing came the first documented sociological insights..." (p. 196) See also, bottom, p. 195.
E. He was asked to write a piece for "The Atlantic Monthly" (summer, 1897) on the state of Negro America -- "Strivings of the Negro People," which clearly foreshadows some of his most famous passages in "The Souls Of Black Folk" (1903). Eg., "How does it feel to be a problem?" (the Negro problem, that is); "Twoness" or double-consciousness, being American and Negro, see bottom p. 199 & pp.200-201.
F. Lewis makes a nice observation about the significance of "The Philadelphia Negro" for the field of sociology specifically. Very high praise. "The Philadelphia Negro was a remarkable example of the new empiricism that was fundamentally transforming the social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although DuBois's novel sociological insights would soon become conventional wisdom, as one of the last books of the nineteenth century, the Philadelphia study would be a breakthrough achievement, an important and virtually solitary departure from the hereditarian theorizing of the times...." (pp. 201-202)
1. DuBois even wrote an unpublished essay, "Sociology Hesitant" (1900), which challenged the sociological establishment. He defined the field as -- "sociology,...is the science that seeks (to measure) the limits of chance in human conduct." (p. 203)
2. Lewis notes the influence of "The Philadelphia Negoro" on some works from black sociologists -- E. Franklin Frazier's family studies, "Black Metropolis" by Horace Cayton & St. Clair Drake, not to mention Myrdal's, "An American Dilemma," and Moynihan's family study (Myrdal & Moynihan were white of course). (I would also include, Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged" (1987))
3. Lewis notes that most of the reviewers of "The Philadelphia Negro" virtually ignored DuBois's race-class-economic analysis of the plight of blacks in Philadelphia, especially how powerful race prejudice was.
4. Lewis closes the chapter with a couple interesting observations about both DuBois's class and race analysis. First, see pp. 209-210, and second: "When DuBois finally wound up this catalogue of discrimination, the causal linkage of race and class to economics was unmistakable. DuBois had ended by driving home his point, writing feelingly: 'For thirty years and more Philadelphia has said to its black children: 'Honesty, efficiency and talent have little to do with your success; if you work hard, spend little and are good you may earn your bread and butter at those sorts of work which we frankly confess we despise; if you are dishonest and lazy, the State will furnish your bread free.'" (p. 210) (Such biting sarcasm is worthy of Malcolm X.)
_______________________
That brings us to Chapter 9. I'll pick up there over the weekend, or on Monday, so look for that.
Monday, February 14, 2011
First Exercise
On Thursday (2/17), we'll be seeing a video-documentary of DuBois's life, entitled: "W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices." After seeing this documentary, I'd like you write a paragraph and post it as a comment on this blog on which ONE of the four segments of DuBois's life you found most interesting and why. In this paragraph you want to refer to some of what you saw and heard in the video, as well as make a case for why you believe it was the most interesting. This exercise is worth 5 activity points, and I'd like you to post your comments NO LATER THAN FRIDAY, FEB.25TH.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Welcome
Welcome students of Sociology 307: W.E.B. DuBois and the Development of Black Sociology. We will be using this blog for a variety of activities over the course of the semester, which I will call you attention to during our first class next Tuesday, Feb. 8th. I will be posting a "get-your-feet-wet" exercise early next week, so be looking for that.
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