Synopses & Reviews
In this book, Jonathan Holloway explores the early lives and careers of economist Abram Harris Jr., sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, and political scientist Ralph Bunche--three black scholars who taught at Howard University during the New Deal and, together, formed the leading edge of American social science radicalism.
Harris, Frazier, and Bunche represented the vanguard of the young black radical intellectual-activists who dared to criticize the NAACP for its cautious civil rights agenda and saw in the turmoil of the Great Depression an opportunity to advocate class-based solutions to what were commonly considered racial problems. Despite the broader approach they called for, both their advocates and their detractors had difficulty seeing them as anything but "black intellectuals" speaking on "black issues."
A social and intellectual history of the trio, of Howard University, and of black Washington, Confronting the Veil investigates the effects of racialized thinking on Harris, Frazier, Bunche, and others who wanted to think "beyond race"--who envisioned a workers' movement that would eliminate racial divisiveness and who used social science to demonstrate the ways in which race is constructed by social phenomena. Ultimately, the book sheds new light on how people have used race to constrain the possibilities of radical politics and social science thinking.
Review
Holloway has fused rich intellectual history with vivid biography to produce an engrossing exploration in the sociology of racial knowledge. This is an exceptional book. (David Levering Lewis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 and W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963)
Review
This highly readable and insightful work provides us with compelling group and individual portraits of Bunche, Frazier, and Harris as social scientists, as thinkers, and as intellectual activists. (Waldo E. Martin Jr., University of California, Berkeley)
Synopsis
This book examines the early lives and careers of economist Abram Harris Jr., sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, and political scientist Ralph Bunche--three black scholars at Howard University during the New Deal era who advocated class-based solutions to social problems that otherwise were interpreted as racial ones.
Synopsis
This collection of essays by scholar-activist W. E. B. Du Bois is a masterpiece in the African American canon. Du Bois, arguably the most influential African American leader of the early twentieth century, offers insightful commentary on black history, racism, and the struggles of black Americans following emancipation. In his groundbreaking work, the author presciently writes that andldquo;the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,andrdquo; and offers powerful arguments for the absolute necessity of moral, social, political, and economic equality. These essays on the black experience in America range from sociological studies of the African American community to illuminating discourses on religion and andldquo;Negro music,andrdquo; and remain essential reading in our so-called andldquo;post-racial age.andrdquo; A new introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway explores Du Boisandrsquo;s signature accomplishments while helping readers to better understand his writings in the context of his time as well as ours.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
About the Author
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868andndash;1963) was one of the most important African American intellectuals of the twentieth century. Jonathan Scott Holloway isand#160;Edmund Morgan professorand#160;of history, African American studies, and American studies at Yale University.