E. Franklin Frazier on W.E.B. Du Bois: Sociologist, Critic, and Friend

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Notes

1. Anthony Platt, E. Franklin Frazier Reconsidered (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 196.

2. It is often forgotten that in the first half of the century, an important sector of African American intellectuals were composed of those with backgrounds in social sciences. They included Monroe Work, Archibald Grimke, Ida Barnett Wells, Charles S. Johnson, Caroline Bond Day, Zora Neale Hurston, Abram Harris, Ralph Bunche, Allison Davis, Horace M. Bond, Ira Reid, Horace Cayton, and St. Clare Drake. The Caribbean-born scholars include Oliver C. Cox (Trinidad) and Kenneth B. Clark (Panama). If historians are included, the list expands to Carter G. Woodson, Rayford Logan, Charles Wesley, and William Leo Hansberry. Today, notable social scientists such as William Julius Wilson and Thomas Sowell, fairly or unfairly, are relegated to the status of pariahs among scholars and intellectuals rooted more in philosophy and literary-cultural analysis. A historical reason for this shift in emphasis is explored in the last chapter of my dissertation, “The Poverty of Race: Abram L. Harris, E. Franklin Frazier, Ralph Bunche, and Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History” (Ph. D. diss. Columbia University, 2004).

3. For example, once Du Bois is defined as a sort of “cultural nationalist,” it is impossible to explain his eventual joining of the American Community Party in 1961; as Harold Cruse demonstrated in 1967, it could only be “a violent about-face.” Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York: Quill, 1967), 176. Cruse, in this still influential text, also fails to analyze Frazier's industrial unionism during the thirties while casting him in a similar nationalist mold. Cruse, 156–7.

4. Arthur Davis, “E. Franklin Frazier (1894–1962): A Profile,” Journal of Negro Education, 31 (Autumn 1962), 430.

5. Allison Davis, Leadership, Love, and Aggression (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1983), 139.

6. Susan Chandler and Anthony Platt, “Constant Struggle: E. Franklin Frazier and Black Social Work in the 1920s,” Social Work, 33 (July–August 1988), 295.

7. Arthur Davis, 430.

8. Arthur Davis, 431.

9. Frazier, “New Currents of Thought among the Colored People of America” (Master's thesis, Clark University, 1920), 22.

10. Frazier, “New Currents of Thought among the Colored People of America.” 32.

11. Frazier, “New Currents of Thought among the Colored People of America,” 12

12. Frazier, “New Currents of Thought among the Colored People of America,” 11

13. Frazier, “New Currents of Thought among the Colored People of America,” 67.

14. Susan Chandler and Anthony Platt, “Constant Struggle: E. Franklin Frazier and Black Social Work in the 1920s,“ Social Work, 33 (July–August 1988), 295.

15. Frazier, “Training of Colored Social Workers in the South,” Journal of Social Force, 1 (May 1923), 446.

16. Frazier, “Neighborhood Union in Atlanta,” Southern Workman, 52 (September, 1924), 437–440

17. Frazier “A Note on Negro Education,” Opportunity, 2 (March 1924), 77.

18. Frazier, “Georgia: or the Struggle against Impudent Inferiority,“ The Messenger, 4 (June 1924) 177.

19. Frazier, “The Negro and Non-Resistance,” The Crisis 27 (March 1924), 213–214.

20. Frazier, “A Response to Criticism,” The Crisis 28 (June 1924), 58–59.

21. See the mid-1920s' correspondence between them in Frazier Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Howard University, box 131-9, folder 5.

22. “The Negro's Struggle to Find His Soul,” Frazier Papers, box 131-76, folder 21.

23. Frazier, “The Garvey Movement,” Opportunity 4 (November 1926), 347.

24. Frazier, “Garvey, A Mass Leader,” The Nation 128 (August 18 1926), 147.

25. Frazier, “The Garvey Movement,” 347.

26. Robert Park to Frazier, 10/25/1923, Frazier Papers, box 131-14, folder 9.

27. Fred Matthews, Quest for an American Sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School ( Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1977), 100. See also Stow Persons, Ethnic Studies at Chicago, 1905–45 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 1987), 34.

28. Matthews, 158.

29. Persons, 34–38.

30. Jerry Watts, “On Reconsidering Park, Johnson, Du Bois, Frazier, and Reid,” Phylon 44 (Fall 1983), 280.

31. Burgess, “The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities,” in Leonard Cottrell, et al., eds., Earnest Burgess on Community, Family, and Delinquency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 93.

32. Ibid.

33. See the acknowledgement in Frazier, The Negro Family in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Pres, 1931).

34. Faris, “Attitude and Behavior,” American Journal of Sociology, 34 (September 1928), 278. The following analysis does not include one of Frazier's most contentious notions today—the disinheritance of African cultural and social heritage in America. The topic deserves its own article, and I shall explore it in another publication. It should be noted, however, that Frazier's famed debate with anthropologist Melville Herskovits predated his publication of the Myth of the Negro Past by about fifteen years, when Frazier reviewed and criticized in 1928 Herskovits's book on race crossing as being shallow and ignorant of the deep South. Frazier, “Review of The American Negro: A Study in Racial Crossing, by Melville Herskovits,” American Journal of Sociology, 33 (May 1928), 1010–1012. It is also clear that Frazier's interest in Africa was genuine and long-standing, despite his denial of cultural continuity. See Michael R. Winston, “E. Franklin Frazier's Role in African Studies,” in James E. Teele, ed., E. Franklin Frazier and Black Bourgeoisie (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 137–152.

35. Frazier, The Negro Family in Chicago, 243–244.

36. For Frazier's assistance to Du Bois's research for Black Reconstruction, and his participation in the second Amenia Conference in 1933, see Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Holt, 2000), 322; Du Bois to Frazier, 10/13/33; Frazier to Du Bois, 10/16/33, Frazier Papers, folder 7, box 131-9.

37. For more detailed analysis, see Joseph Demarco, “The Rationale and Foundation of Du Bois's Theory of Economic Cooperation,” Phylon, 35 (Spring 1974), 5–15. The most comprehensive summary of the program was written by Du Bois himself. “The Negro and Social Reconstruction,” Herbert Aptheker, ed., Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887–1961 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 143–157

38. Du Bois, “The Field and Function of the Negro College,” in Herbert Aptheker, ed., The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques (Amherst: Massachusetts Press, 1973), 98. This 1933 speech was given at Fisk University.

39. Du Bois, “Postscript,” The Crisis 41 (February 1934), 53.

40. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 667.

41. Thomas D. Boston, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Historical School of Economics,” American Economic Review 81 (May 1991), 304 See also Francis Broderick, “German Influence on the Scholarship of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Phylon 19 (Winter 1958), 367–371; Kenneth Birkin, “‘Berlin Days,’ 1892–1894: W. E. B. Du Bois and German Political Economy,” Boundary 2 27 (Fall 2000), 79–101.

42. Stanford Lyman shows this theory-oriented tendency of Chicago sociology in Robert Park's rejection of a report by his own research assistant who contradicted his race-relations cycle theory. Lyman, The Black American in Sociological Thought (New York: Capricorn, 1978), 31–35.

43. Frazier, “Du Bois Program” Race 1 (Winter 1935), 12.

44. See Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Holt, 2000), 346–7.

45. Adolph Reed reminds us that Du Bois's call for “self-segregation” should be properly understood as a mobilization strategy for the specific purpose of organizing African Americans in the New Deal America that was either indifferent or hostile to their plight. Reed, W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 72–79

46. Ernest Allen, “Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument.” Black Scholar 33 (Summer 2003), 25–43.

47. Park, Race and Culture: Essays in the Sociology of the Contemporary Man (New York: 1950), 291.

48. Frazier, “The Status of the Negro in American Social Order,” Journal of Negro Education, 4 (July 1935), 307.

49. Frazier, “The Status of the Negro in American Social Order,” 307.

50. Charles Johnson to Arthur Schomburg, 12/21/1935, Schomburg Papers, Schomburg Center, NYPL, MF. R: 9, F: 995.

51. Frazier to Du Bois, 11/6/36, Du Bois Papers, MF, R45: F935.

52. Du Bois, “Review of The Negro Family in the United States,” Journal of Negro Education 9 (April 1940), 212.

53. Lewis, 391-2, and 466–469.

54. Lewis, 470.

55. For the examples of Afro-American sociologists' “war efforts,” see Ira Reid, “The Negro on the Home Front in World Wars I and II,” Journal of Negro Education, 7 (Summer 1943), 511–520; “The D-Day and the Negro Soldier,” Intercollegian, 61 (April, 1944), 14; Charles Johnson, To Stem This Tide: a Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States 1943 (New York: AMS Press, 1969); “The Negro,” American Journal of Sociology, 47 (May 1942), 854–864.

56. Frazier, “Ethnic and Minority Groups in Wartime, with Special Reference to the Negro,” American Journal of Sociology 48 (November 1942), 373.

57. Frazier, “Ethnic and Minority Groups in Wartime,” 377.

58. Frazier, “Brazil Has No Race Problem,” Common Sense 11 (November 1942), 365.

59. See Frazier's two major works, The Negro Family in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), and The Negro Youth at the Crossway: Their Personality Development in the Middle States (New York: Schoken, 1940).

60. In 1942, Frazier wrote Swedish economist Gunner Myrdal who was writing what would become American Dilemma, “The Negroes has been able during his history in America to identify his cause with broader moral issues. For example, in the present war he is able to identify his own cause with the broader struggle for democracy.” Frazier to Myrdal, 6/12/1942, Frazier Papers, box 131-27, folder 16.

61. Frazier to Dwell, 3/24/1931, Frazier Papers, folder 8, box 131-9.

62. Frazier, “Brazil Has No Race Problem,” 364.

63. Platt, “E. Franklin Frazier and Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Setting the Record Straight” Contemporary-Crises 11 (Fall 1987), 265–277; Lee Rainwater and William Y. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, MA.: The M.I.T. Press, 1967), 252–254.

64. See Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 233–245; Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 349–391.

65. Frazier, “A World Community and Universal Moral Order,” Ida Guggenheimer Papers, Shomburg Center, folder “E. Franklin Frazier Writings.”

66. Frazier to James Marshall, 10/15/1951, Frazier Papers, box 131-41, folder 18.

67. Frazier to James Marshall, 10/15/1951, Frazier Papers, box 131-41, folder 18.

68. Frazier, “The New Negro,” The Nation, 183 (January 1956), 7.

69. Frazier, “The New Negro,” 8.

70. “Impacts of Colonialism on African Social Forms and Personalities,” Frazier Papers, box 131-76, folder 27.

71. Frazier, Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 297.

72. See Walter Jackson, “Between Socialism and Nationalism: The Young E. Franklin Frazier.” Reconstruction 1 (Winter 1991), 124–134.

73. Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, 23.

74. Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, 235.

75. Frazier, “The Failure of the Negro Intellectual,” Negro Digest (February 1962), 34.

76. Frazier, “The Failure of the Negro Intellectual,” 34.

77. Frazier, “The Failure of the Negro Intellectual,” 35.

78. “The New Role of the Negro Women,” Frazier Papers, box 131-77, folder 1.

79. “The Winds of Time,”; 770, in Herbert Aptheker, ed., Newspaper Columns by W. E. B. Du Bois, Volume 2 (White Plain, NY: Kraus-Thompson, 1986), 770.

80. “Untitled,” Frazier Papers, box 131-31, folder 2.

81. Du Bois, The Autobiography, 396.

82. Mike Keen, Stalking the Sociological Imagination, 91–99.

83. Frazier, “Potential American Negro Contributions to African Social Development,” in Africa: Seen by American Negroes. (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1959), 276.

84. Frazier, “The Failure of the Negro intellectual,” 35.

85. Du Bois, “On Being Ashamed of Oneself,” Crisis 40 (September 1933), 199–200.

86. “How United Are Negroes?” in Newspaper Columns by W. E. B. Du Bois, Volume 2, 953

87. “How United Are Negroes?” 955

88. William Ingersoll, The Reminiscences of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Columbia University, Oral History Research Office, 1963), 109.

89. Frazier to Du Bois, 12/5/60, Du Bois Papers, MF: R74, F23.

90. Frazier to St. Clair Drake, 1/18/1961, Frazier Papers, box 131-9, folder 2.

91. Platt, E. Franklin Frazier Reconsidered, 199.

92. Du Bois, “The Black Bourgeoisie: The Present Leadership of American Negroes,” National Guardian, May 20, 1957.

93. Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1987), 266.