The presence of African American scholarship in early American criminology texts (1918–1960)

This paper reviews the results of a citation analysis conducted to determine the extent of references to African American scholarship in American criminology texts published between 1918 and 1960. The analysis showed that African American graduates from the University of Chicago's “Chicago School”, including Charles Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Monroe Work, and Earl R. Moses, were cited most often. They were usually cited in discussions of either race or culture areas and crime. African American scholars' discussions of the effects of social, economic, and political conditions such as slavery, segregation, racism and oppression on crime and criminality, especially among African Americans, were generally not cited. These findings suggest that while claims that African American scholarship cannot be found in mainstream publications might be somewhat overstated as they relate to early American criminology texts, the most important themes found in the writings of African Americans were excluded.

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 37^th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, held March 21–25, 2000, in New Orleans, LA. We thank Ruth Runion-Slear of the interlibrary loan department at Penn State-Harrisburg for locating several rare criminology textbooks reviewed in our analysis.

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 37^th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, held March 21–25, 2000, in New Orleans, LA. We thank Ruth Runion-Slear of the interlibrary loan department at Penn State-Harrisburg for locating several rare criminology textbooks reviewed in our analysis.

Notes

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 37^th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, held March 21–25, 2000, in New Orleans, LA. We thank Ruth Runion-Slear of the interlibrary loan department at Penn State-Harrisburg for locating several rare criminology textbooks reviewed in our analysis.