This stunning new work examines the influence of African-American intellectuals, including NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois, on the then-emerging field of sociology, and how their radical views on race, gender, religion, and class shaped the discipline.

After the pioneers, the second generation of African American anthropologists trained in the late 1950s and 1960s. Expected to study their own or similar cultures, these scholars often focused on the African diaspora but in some cases they also ranged further afield both geographically and intellectually. Yet their work remains largely unknown to colleagues and students. This volume collects intellectual biographies of fifteen accomplished African American anthropologists of the era. The authors explore the scholars' diverse backgrounds and interests and look at their groundbreaking methodologies, ethnographies, and theories. They also place their subjects within their tumultuous times, when antiracism and anticolonialism transformed the field and the emergence of ideas around racial vindication brought forth new worldviews. Scholars profiled: George Clement Bond, Johnnetta B. Cole, James Lowell Gibbs Jr., Vera Mae Green, John Langston Gwaltney, Ira E. Harrison, Delmos Jones, Diane K. Lewis, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Oliver Osborne, Anselme Remy, William Alfred Shack, Audrey Smedley, Niara Sudarkasa, and Charles Preston Warren II

The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of "the color line." From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics —beautiful in design and powerful in content—make visible a wide spectrum of black experience. W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphics in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination. As Maria Popova wrote, these data portraits shaped how "Du Bois himself thought about sociology, informing the ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later in The Souls of Black Folk."

This pathbreaking collection of intellectual biographies is the first to probe the careers of thirteen early African-American anthropologists, detailing both their achievements and their struggle with the latent and sometimes blatant racism of the times. Invaluable to historians of anthropology, this collection will also be useful to readers interested in African-American studies and biography. The lives and work of: Caroline Bond Day, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Eugene King, Laurence Foster, W. Montague Cobb, Katherine Dunham, Ellen Irene Diggs, Allison Davis, St. Clair Drake, Arthur Huff Fauset, William S. Willis Jr., Hubert Barnes Ross, Elliot Skinner

The first comprehensive understanding of Du Bois for social scientists The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois provides a comprehensive introduction to the founding father of American sociological thought. Du Bois is now recognized as a pioneer of American scientific sociology and as someone who made foundational contributions to the sociology of race and to urban and community sociology. However, in this authoritative volume, noted scholars José Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown provide a groundbreaking account of Du Bois’s theoretical contribution to sociology, or what they call the analysis of “racialized modernity.” Further, they examine the implications of developing a Du Boisian sociology for the practice of the discipline today. The full canon of Du Bois’s sociological works spans a lifetime of over ninety years in which his ideas evolved over much of the twentieth century. This broader and more systematic account of Du Bois’s contribution to sociology explores how his theories changed, evolved, and even developed to contradict earlier ideas. Careful parsing of seminal works provides a much needed overview for students and scholars looking to gain a better grasp of the ideas of Du Bois, in particular his understanding of racialized subjectivity, racialized social systems, and his scientific sociology. Further, the authors show that a Du Boisian sociology provides a robust analytical framework for the multilevel examination of individual-level processes—such as the formation of the self—and macro processes—such as group formation and mobilization or the structures of modernity—key concepts for a basic understanding of sociology.

"Bart Landry's Black Working Wives is a very comprehensive account of the family revolution in America. I learned a great deal reading this thoughtful book. Landry’s discussion of the dual career marriages of black women decades before the feminist revolution, and the lessons they provide not only for understanding dynamic changes in American families but also for anticipating the future of the modern two-career family, is insightful and persuasive."—William Julius Wilson, author of The Bridge over the Racial Divide "Bart Landry's Black Working Wives is a perceptive analysis that connects the historical circumstances of Black women to the transformation of modern American family structures. This is an important contribution which should engage general readers, students, and public policy leaders and deepen our understanding of the origins and value of the dual career family."—Darlene Clark Hine, author of Speak Truth to Power "Landry blends history, demography, and contemporary social analysis to illuminate the form and function of African-American families over time. He does a particularly good job of describing how, decades ago, middle-class black families prefigured the relatively egalitarian, two-wage earner households that are so common today. An incisive and rewarding book."—Jacqueline Jones, author of American Work "This is first-rate, engaging, provocative, solid scholarship. I enthusiastically recommend it!"—Walter R. Allen, University of California, Los Angeles "Landry has made a significant contribution to an existing body of literature on the family and race--and, more important, he has advanced a position that is not present in that literature."—Troy Duster, University of California, Berkeley, and New York University "A very important book that contributes vitally to the small but growing literature on African American women and their agency in making lives for themselves and their families and in shaping American society."—Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Colby College