"George Edmund Haynes" {August 31,1880-January 8,1960}

Author,educator,and organizer was a social scientist,relgious leader and

pioneer in social work education for African-Americans.Born to Louis & Mattie Haynes in Pine Bluff Arkansas,George was the oldest of two children of a domestic worker,mama and day labor daddy.He was educated in the segregated and unequal school system of Pine Bluff,Arkansas.Eventually his family move to Hot Springs,Arkansas to pursue greater educational opportunities for the Haynes children.His mama instilled in him a desire for self-improvement,and a belief in formal education as a means of escaping poverty and discrimination.Her support and his own natural curiosity and ambition,prompted him to pursue a college degree.
A visit to Chicago in 1893,gave George additional encouragement in Chicago he encountered a close-knit African American community that engaged in stimulating,intellectual conversations including the questions of migration and emigration and other contemporary issues affecting African American.George completed a year of College preparation at the academy at Fisk University in Nashville,Tennessee from which he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1903.He won a scholarship to Yale Graduate School where he earned master's degree in sociology within a year,waiting tables,and stoking furnaces to pay for his living expenses.
While studying at the University of Chicago in 1906 and 1907,George became interested in social problems affecting African Americans migrants from the South.This interest led him to the New York School of Philanthropy,from which he graduated in 191o.Two years later he received a PhD from Columbia University.Columbia University Press published his doctoral dissertation,The Negro at Work in New York City.Earlier,while still a graduate student,George
he had been secretary of the Colored Men's Department of the International Committee of the YMCA,during which time he visited African American colleges and encouraged students to achieve scholastic excellence and to help their schools set high academic standards.Within this period,George involved
himself  in the activities of the American Association for the Protection of Colored Women,the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York,and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.(NLUCAN) the forerunner of the National Urban League.George also served as its executive director from 1911-1918.He also established the Association of Negro Colleges & Secondary Schools & served that
organization as secretary from 1910-1918.He also helped the New York School
of Philanthropy and NLUCAN in collaborative planning that led to the establishment of the first social work center for African American graduate students at Fisk,and he directed the center from 1910-1918.George supervised field placements of League fellows at the New York school and was professor of economics and sociology at Fisk.On Leave from Fisk 1918-1921,he serve as
Director of Negro Economics at the United States Department of Labor.Here he was involved in matters of racial conflict in employment,housing and recreation.George continued his earlier studies of exclusion of African American workers from certain
trade unions,interracial conditions in the workplace,and child labor.These studies resulted in numerous scholar works.one of the most significant of these was The Negro at work During the World War and During Reconstruction.
The work's widespread and profound impact resulted in his appointment as a member of the
President's Unemployment Conference in 1921.In 1930 he did a survey of the work of the YMCA in
South Africa,and in 1947 he conducted a similar study of the organization's activities in other African nations.These efforts resulted in George being chosen as consultant on Africa by the World Committee of
YMCA's.His book Trend of  the Races (1922),reflected his belief in the union of all his people.Over the last nine years of his life,he taught at the City College of New York and served as an officer of the
American Committee on Africa.Dr.Haynes die in New York.