The Scholar Denied

May 11, 2015
While many people are familiar with W.E.B. Du Bois’s work for civil rights, fewer are aware of his impact on the field of sociology. Northwestern University sociology professor Morris (Origins of the Civil Rights Movement) seeks to remedy that neglect with this fascinating study. He focuses on how Du Bois started one of the country’s first sociology departments at Atlanta University, only to see his contributions to scholarship systematically ignored and erased by scholars, notably Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, an ally of Du Bois’s intellectual rival, Booker T. Washington. Du Bois contended that “externally imposed social conditions,” not intrinsic inferiority, were the cause of African Americans’ low social status, and that moreover, being part of society, African Americans could not objectively evaluate their own self-worth. Morris’s work bears all the hallmarks of meticulous research, lending credence to its well-presented thesis. This academically oriented text will be intimidating to anyone without a background in Du Bois’s work or in sociology. However, for those readers who do accept the challenge, the rewards will be great and the reading dense but enjoyable.

June 1, 2015
A bid to restore a brilliant black scholar to his rightful place in the history of sociology. Morris (Sociology and African American Studies/Northwestern Univ.; The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 1984, etc.) contends that the activist and polymath W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) started the first school of scientific sociology at Atlanta University at the turn of the last century. Due to endemic racism in the academic world at that time, the achievements of Du Bois and his followers were "erased from the sociological record," while the distinction of pioneering the field was awarded to Robert Park and the "Chicago school" of sociology, which the author considers much inferior to the work of the Atlanta scholars. Morris cites plentiful examples of jaw-dropping racism from the works of the Chicago school, much of which rested on theories of eugenics and social Darwinism; Du Bois aimed to use his objective sociology to dismantle these pseudoscientific bases of racial oppression. Morris asserts that he "offers, for the first time, a comparison between the Chicago school of sociology and Du Bois's Atlanta school, clearly showing that the latter theorized the novel view that race was a social construct and supported this position with pioneering methodologies and empirical research." The book contains a solid core of information about Du Bois' work, his clashes with Booker T. Washington and supporters of the "Tuskegee Machine," and his systematic exclusion from white-dominated scholarly networks. It is, however, frequently repetitive and sometimes lapses into terminology like "intellectual nonhegemonic school" and the cant of academic political correctness. The author accepts too readily the proposition that racism alone sufficiently explains Du Bois' exclusion from the sunny uplands of academe, without considering the effect that his subject's increasingly radical politics and abrasive personality had on his contemporary reputation. His argument also necessarily requires frequent comparisons with the work of other sociologists, which are of little interest to general readers. Inside baseball for sociologists.

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Starred review from June 1, 2015

Exposing the workings of academic segregation that marginalized pioneering modern theorist and social behaviorist William Edward Burghardt "W.E.B." Du Bois (1863-1963), Morris (sociology, Northwestern Univ.; The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement) challenges the history of sociology's founding and development as a discipline. He opens by investigating the important role of race in the evolution of American sociology and follows with eight chapters tracing Du Bois's insights and methodologies. Mapped out are the expansive boundaries Du Bois established at Atlanta University, where he developed a social scientific school that impressed the likes of German social theorist Max Weber, as it engaged investigations ranging from city to countryside, North and South, examining class, crime, culture, gender, race, and religion. In analyzing Du Bois's marginalization, Morris focuses on profound differences between Du Bois's approaches and those of Robert E. Park's "Chicago school" that came to define and dominate mainstream sociology. Most of all, Morris reveals how the power of political ideology attached to funding doomed Du Bois. VERDICT Morris's provocative expose of how economic and political power elevates the ideas, images, and intellectuals America publicly embraces. A must-read for anyone interested in American sociology and/or the U.S. marketplace of ideas.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

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