At a time of heightened awareness and discussion of race, racism and racial prejudice in certain sectors of our populace, even in the face of efforts to dismiss them with claims that as of the election of Barack Obama we are currently “post-racial”, I would like to highlight the contributions of Edward Franklin Frazier to what we know and understand about oppressed communities in general and the black community in specific.
September 24th is the birthday of one of this nation’s foremost sociologists, who was born in Baltimore, MD in 1894 and who died May 17, 1962, in Washington DC where he was Professor Emeritus at Howard University. At the time of his death he was still carrying a full teaching load.
Frazier was a founding member of the D.C. Sociological Society, serving as President of DCSS in 1943-44. Frazier also served as President of the Eastern Sociological Society in 1944-45. In 1948, Frazier was the first black to serve as President of the American Sociological Society (later renamed Association). His Presidential Address “Race Contacts and the Social Structure,” was presented at the organization’s annual meeting in Chicago in December 1948.
