"Edward Franklin Frazier" (September24,1894-May 17,1962)

Was an American sociologist.His 1932 Ph.D.dissertation The Negro Family in Chicago,later

released as a book The Negro Family in the United States in 1939,analyzed the cultural and historical forces that influenced the development of the African American family from the time of slavery.The book was awarded the 1940 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for the most significant work in the fields of race relations.This book was among the first sociological works on blacks researched and written by a black person.He helped draft the UNESCO statement The Race Question in 1950.He was born in Baltimore,Maryland on September 24,1894.Edward was one of five children of James H.Frazier attended Baltimore public schools.Upon his graduation from Colored High School's annual scholarship to Howard University in Washington,DC,from where he graduated with honors in 1916.He was an excellent scholar,pursuing Latin,Greek,German and Mathematics.He also found time to participate in extracurricular activities involving drama,political science,the NAACP and the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.His leadership skills were evidenced in his class presidencies of 1915 to 1916.Edward attended Clark University in Worcester,Massachusetts where he earned a master's degree in 1920.The topic of his thesis was "New Currents of Thought Among the Colored People of America."It was during his time at Clark that he first became acquainted with sociology.After spending 1920-1921 as a Russell Sage Foundation fellow at the New York School of Social Work(later Columbia University School of Social Work)and a year at the University of Copenhagen as fellow of the American Scandinavian Foundation,Edward accepted an appointment at Atlanta University where he served as the director of the Atlanta School of Social Work and as instructor of sociology at Morehouse College.In 1941 he embarked on year-long study of family life in Brazil,supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship.He spent twenty years associated with Howard University where his work focused on the environment of black colleges,especially that of Howard University.One of Edward's colleagues in his final years at Howard was Nathan Hare,author of The Black Saxons which Edward rival Oliver Cox excoriated as part of the "Black Bourgeoisie School" of race analysis.Like Edward ,Nathan also went on to upbraid historically black colleges,principally Howard(self styled in those days "The Capstone of Negro Education").Edward position formed one half of the debate with Melville J.Herskovits on the nature of cultural contact in the Western Hemisphere,specifically with reference to Africans,Europeans,and their descendants.Edward' Black Bourgeoisie,the 1957 translation of a work first published in French in 1955,was a critical examination of the adoption by middle class,viewed as itself intellectually and culturally barren.He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.Edward died in Washington D.C.. he has been ranked among the top African Americans for his influence on institutions and practices to accept the demands by African Americans for economic,political and social equality  in American life.He was also known for his numerous feuds with fellow academics,most notably Charles Johnson,and Melville Herskovits.He was also briefly alienated from his mentor W.E.B. Du Bois in the 1930s.