"Kelly Miller Jr." (July 23,1863-December 23,1939)

Was an African American mathematician,sociologist,essayist,newspaper

columinist,author,and an important figure in the intellectual life of African Americans for close to half a century.He was known as "The Bard of the Potomac" in his day.He came from a big family.Kelly was the sixth of ten children born to Elizabeth & Kelly Miller Sr.His mama was a former slave and his his daddy was a freed African American who served in the union army.Kelly was born in Winnsboro,South Ccarolina where he attend local primary and grade school.From 1878-1880 Kelly attended the Fairfield Institute where his hard work paid off and was offered a scholarship to the historically African American college,Howard University.Kelly finished the prepatory department's three-year curriculum in Latin and Greek,then mathematics in two years.After finishing one department he quickly moved on to the next one.Kelly attended the College Department at Howard from 1882-1886.In 1886,he was given the opportunity to study advance mathematics with Captain Edgar Frisby.Edgar was an English mathematician working at the U.S. Naval Observatory.Edgar's chief,Simon Newcomb noticed Kelly's intellectual talent and recommended him to Johns Hopkins University.He spent the following two years at Johns Hopkins University (1887-1889) and became the first African American student to attend the university.He spent his time at the university studying mathematics,physics,and astronomy.
Unfortunately,Kelly was not able to keep attending Johns Hopkins University due to low funds.From 1889-1890 He taught mathematics at the M Street High School in Washington,D.C. Appointed professor of mathematics at Howard in 1890,Kelly introduced sociology into the curriculmum,strengtening the natural and social sciences.Kelly graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1903.In 1907,Kelly was appointed dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.His deanship lasted twelve years and in that time,the college changed significantly.During his twelve-year deanship the college improved dramatically.The old classical curriculum was modernized and new courses in the natural sciences & the social sciences were added.Kelly gave a lot back to Howard.In 1914 he planned a Negro-Amercana Museum and Library and persuaded Jesse E.Moorland,to donate his large private library on blacks in Africa and the United States to Howard University.Jesse was a former Howard alum and official of the Young Men's Christian Men's Christian Association.Kelly's persuasion worked and the library became the foundation for his Negro-Americana Museum and Library Center.
Kelly's written works made him very well known.Kelly was a prolific writer of articles and essays which were published in major newspapers and magazines,and several books,including Out of the House of Bondage.Kelly assisted W.E.B.Du Bois in editing The Crisis,the official journal of the NAACP.Kelly started of publishing his articles anonymously in the Boston Transcript.He wrote about radical and conservative groups.He also shared his views in the Educational Review,Dial,Education,and the Journal of Social Science.His anonymous articles later became his lead essay in his book Race Adjustment that was published in 1908.He suggested that African Americans had the rights to protest against unjust circumstances that came with the rise of white supremacy in the south.He was a supported of racial harmony,of thrift,and institutional building.In 1917 Kelly,published an open letter to President Woodrow Wilson in the Baltimore Afro-American against lynching,which he called "national in its rage and scope," and called the government's failure to stop it "the disgrace of democracy." He also stated "it is but hollow mockery of the Negro when he is beaten and bruised in all parts of the nation and flees to the national government for asylum,to be denied relief on the basis doubtful jurisdiction.The black ask for protection and is given a theory of government." It was circulated as a pamphlet in the camp libraries of the US armed forces for about a year until "the department of military censorship"ordered it removed because it "tended to make the soldier who read [it] a less effective fighter
against the German.
Kelly's gained his well-known national importance from his involvement in a movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois.He showed intellectual leadership during conflict between the "accommodations"of Booker T.Washington and the " radicalism" of the growing civil rights.Kelly was known in two ways to the public.
On African-American education policy,Kelly aligned himself with either the " radicals" -and E.E.B. Du Bois and the Niagara Movement- nor the "conservatives"-the followers of Booker T.Washington.Kelly sought a middle way,comprehensive system that would provide for "symmetrical development" of African American citizens by offering both vocational and intellectual instruction.
Kelly was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
He also believed that African Americans should favor free market rather than government or union power starting:
"The capitalist has but one dominating motive,the production and sales of goods.The race of color of the producer counts but little... The capitalist stands for an open shop which gives to every man the unhindered right to work according to his ability and skill.In this proposition the capitalist and the Negro as one.
After World War I,Kelly's life became difficult.He was demoted in 1919 to dean of a new junior college after J.Stanley Durkee  was appointed as president of Howard in 1918 and built a new central administration.He continued to publish articles and weekly columns in African American press.His views were published in more than 100 newspapers.Kelly died on Howard's campus,married to Annie May Butler.A daddy of five.

"Chancellor James Williams."(December 22,1898-Decemb 7,1992)

Was an  African American sociologist,historian,and writer.He was the author of the Destruction of Black Civilization (1971).Chancellor was born in Bennettsville,South Carolina,as the last of five children;his daddy was a former slave,while his mama was a cook,nurse and an evangelist.His innate curiosity concerning the realities of racial inequality cultural struggles,particularly those that which involved African Americans began as early as his fifth-grade year.Years later,he quoted in an early interview as saying:"I was very sensitive about the position of black people in the town...I wanted to know how you explain this great difference.How it is that we were in such low circumstances as compared to the whites? And when they answered 'slavery as the explanation,then i wanted to know where we come from?He moved with his family to Washington,DC in the early 20th century.His first wife,Dorothy Ann Williams,died in 1925,leaving him a widower with five children.Chancellor earned an undergraduate degree Foundation in 1930 followed by a Master of Arts Degree in History in 1935,broth from Howard University.After completing a doctoral dissertation on the socioeconomic significance of the storefront church movement in the United States since 1920,he was awarded a Ph.D.In history and sociology by American University in 1949.He began his studies abroad as a visiting professor to the universities of Oxford & London in England in 1953& 1956,he did field research in Africa history at Ghana's University College.At that time,his main focus was on African achievements and self-ruling civilizations which existed long before coming of Europeans or Asians.His last study,completed in 1964,covered 26 countries and more than 100 language groupings.In 1935 Chancellor took the post of Administrative for the Cheltenham School for Boys in Maryland four years later he became a teacher in the Washington,DC public schools.He entered the employment of the U.S. Federal Government in 1941,filling a variety of positions such as section chief  of  Census Bureau,statistician for the War Relocation Board and,economist in the Office of Price Administration.In 1946 he returned to his Alma mater as a social science instructor until 1952.It was then that he transferred to the history department,where he remained until he retired in 1966.In 1971,Chancellor sent his magnum opus The Destruction of Black Civilization to Kendall Hunt,a white-owned publishing company,for publication and distribution.The following year,the book received an award from the Black Academy of Letters and Arts.Encouraged by the award,he worked for years to expand and revise the book before publishing a second edition.Feeling more comfortable with an African American-owned firm as his publisher,he sent the second version to Chicago's noted Third World Press.When publisher in 1987,the second edition of the book received wide critical acclaim from the African American community.The book however was seen as Pseudohistory Afrocentrism by most mainstream reviewers.In 1979,the 21st Century Foundation honored Chancellor with its first Clarence L.Holte international Biennial Prize.He died of respiratory failure at Provident Hospital in Washington,D.C..He had been a resident of the Washington Center for Aging Services for several years.He was survived by his wife of 65 years.Mattie Williams of Washington,and 14 children;36 grandchildren;38 great-grandchildren;and 10 great-great-grandchildren.

"Oliver Cox"

From Port of Spain,Trinidad,he was one of eight children and was raised by his uncle Reginald was a teacher.He came to the United States and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in law from Northwestern University in 1928.He had plan to return Trinidad after graduation;he succumbed to poliomyelitis which permanently cripped both legs.Faced with disability Oliver felt compelled to find another career.He entered the Department of Economics at the University Chicago.In June 1932,he graduated with a Master's Degree.He also attended the University of Chicago Department of Sociology,and graduated in 1938 with a P.hD.in Sociology.He joined the faulty of Lincoln University in Jefferson City,Missouri in 1949.He stayed there until 1970,when he joined the faulty of Wayne State University in Michigan.Oliver is best known for attack on the "caste school of relations,"in later years he argued his Marxist views capitalism and race in three books:Foundations of Capitalism (1959),Capitalism and American Leadership (1962),and Capitalism as a System (1964).His final work Jewish Selfinterest and Black Pluralism (1974).

"Charles Spurgeon Johnson" (July 24 1893- October 27 1956)

Sociologist and college president,was born in Bristol,Virginia,the eldest of six children of Charles Henry Johnson,a Baptist minister,and Winifred Branch.Because there was not a high school for African-American in Bristol,he moved to Richmond and attended the Wayland Academy.In 1913 Charles entered college at Virginia Union in Richmond,and graduated in only three years.While at college,he volunteered with the Richmond Welfare Association,and one incident there had a profound impact on his future career.During the holiday season,while delivering baskets to needy people,he came across a young woman lying on a pile of tags,groaning in labor.None of the doctors in the area would help the young woman,Charles persuaded a midwife to deliver the baby.He then tried to locate a home for the young woman,those he approached shut the door in his face.Some families rejected the young woman because she was African-American and others because,in their eyes,she had sinned.Edwin Embree,Charles longtime time friend,once noted that Charles could not get the image of the young woman out of his mind and could not "cease pondering the anger of people at human catastrophe while they calmly accept conditions that caused it." In 1916 Charles moved north to pursue a PhD at the University of Chicago,which at that time employed some of the world's most prominent sociologists.It was thee that he would meet his lifetime mentor,Robert E.Park.As a result of this relationship,many of his writings and approaches to race relations bear the mark of the eminent of Chicago researcher.He interrupted his studies to enlists in the military in 1918,upon returning to Chicago a year later, he found himself in the middle of one of the most horrific race riots in U.S. history. This incident sparked His involvement with the Chicago Race Relations Commission;as associate executive secretary for that body, he was largely responsible for the writing of The Negro in Chicago:A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot(1922).With this publication Charles spearheaded a tradition of social science research that described changes in race relation as cycles of tension and resolution,largely caused by outside forces.Partly based on the work of Robert,Charles version of this sociological model envisioned a wider role for human intervention;in particular,he believed that government could influence this process.Charles work with the Chicago Race Relations Commission also introduced him to Julius Rosenwald,the Sears and Roebuck tycoon and creator of the Julius Rosenwald Fund (which assisted with the establishment of African-American schools in the South and provided scholarships to talented African-American intellectuals).Charles married Marie Antoinette Burgette on November 6 1920.He moved with his wife to New York City,where he became the director of research and investigations for the National Urban League.During this period he also edited the league's journal,Opportunity,and published short stories and poems by several prominent Harlem Renaissance authors,including Langston Hughes,Countee Cullen,Aaron Douglas,and Zora Neale Hurston.Charles also used his well-established connections to white philanthropists to secure financial support for African-American literature and art.In his view,promoting culture was a way of combating racism.The sociologists Blyden Jackson,his colleague while he was attending Fisk University in Nashville,Tennessee,credits him with helping to "ease the transformation of more than one neophyte in the arts,like Zora Neale Hurston, from a nonentity into a luminary of the Renaissance."Indeed,both Blyden and Alaib Locke, point to a 1924 dinner Charles hosted in New-York as one of the most important contributions to the Renaissance.With more than three hundred people from both the white and African-American worlds in attendance (including Alain,James Weldon Johnson, William Baldwin III,Jessie Fauset,Countee Cullen,Albert Barnes,and W.E.B. Du Bois),the event helped many African-Americans poets,artists,and writers find mainstrain publishers and venues for their endeavors.For Charles,events like this dinner were part of a carefully planned effort to improve opportunities for African-Americans in the 1920s in ways that had not been possible during the nadir of race relations before World War I.Near the close of the Renaissance in 1928,Charles returned south to Nashville to chair the department of social sciences at Fisk University,Supported by a grant from Lauren Spelman Rockefeller Memorial,the department was set up with the idea that he would be its leader. Armed with solid connections and ample funding,he brought many important individuals to the Fisk campus,including Sterling Brown,James Weldon Johnson,Horace Mann Bond,Robert E.Park,E. Franklin Frazier,Arn Bontemps, and Aaron Douglas.Along with with his colleagues in the social sciences,Charles published widely.It was during this time that he produced some of his best known works, such as Shadow of the Plantation (1934),Growing Up in the Black Belt (1938),and Patterns of Negro Segregation(1942).He also created an internationally renowned race relations institute at Fisk,which brought together leaders,scholars,and ordinary citizens from throughout the U.S. and the world to discuss race relations in an integrated setting.Despite suffering extensive criticism locally,especially from the segregationist Nashville Banner,the institute and Charles leadership drew great prominence to Fisk and to Charles as an individual.In 1946,at at time when Fisk,was experiencing a leadership crisis, its board of trustees considered selecting the first African-American candidate to lead the institution.Given his international stature and administrative skills,he seemed like the most obvious candidate,several of the alumni,including Fisk's most prominent graduate,W.E.B. Du Bois,spoke out vehemently against his selection.Charles close ties to philanthropy,including the Whitney, Ford, and Rosenwald foundations,made him suspect in their minds.For this group,the foundations were forever tainted by their previous efforts to promote and industrial curriculum at African-American colleges.Despite the opposition,the financial needs of Fisk prevailed over ideology,and Charles was inaugurated president in 1947;the board of trustees had recognized his success in advancing and improving Fisk's race relations institute through his fund-raising efforts and believed that he might similarly ensure progress for the university as a whole.In his role as president,he created the Basic College Early Entry Program.Charles was a proponent of integration,he doubted that it would occur quickly and thus was inspired to initiate a program to nurture young African-American minds within the African-American college setting.The Basic College offered students a cohesive learning environment in which they benefited from the knowledge and experience of literary,artistic,and political, figures that Charles invited to campus in the years before his death.The program produced such figures as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis;Hazel O'Leary,energy secretary during the administration of President Bill Clinton;and Spelman College College president Johnette Cole.In addition to his university-releated service,Charles served as a trustee for the Julius Rosenwald Fund from 1933 to 1948,working specifically as the codirector of the fund's race-relation's program.From 1944 to 1950 he acted as the director of the race relations division of the American Missionary Association.Concurrently with his foundation work,he conducted research for the federal government and worked as a cultural ambassador.Asa member of the New Deal's Committee on Farm Tenancy,Charles supported President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to end poverty and racism in the rural south.After World War II,under the direction of President Harry Truman,Charles was one of ten U.S. delegates for the first United Nations Educational,Scientific,and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference in Paris.And he assisted President Dwight Eisenhower by serving on the Board of Foreign Scholarships under the Fullbright-Hays Act.Charles spent a lifetime cultivating African-American scholarship,creativity,and leadership and used research and culture as tools to fight racism.As he grew older,the pressure generated by his many obligations began to take its toll:his migraine headaches worsened,and he developed a heart condition. Charles died of a heat attack on the train platform in Louisville,Kentucky.

"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.

"Horace Roscoe Cayton Jr." (1903-1970)

Was the son of Horace and Susie Cayton and the grandson of Hiram Revels, the first black U.S. Senator.After graduation from Seattle's Franklin High School and the University of Washington,Horace attended the University of Chicago.It was that his career as a sociologist was defined.He was "determined to learn all there was about the Negro community."Teaching assignments at Tuskegee and Fisk University broadened his knowledge.Returning to Chicago after his teaching sojourns,one of his first in-depth research efforts was interviewing black policemen on Chicago's police force.His book,written in collaboration with economics professor George S.Mitchell,was black workers and the New Unions.Horce Clayton and Clair St.Drake,a social anthropologist,co-athored Black Metropolis which was published in 1945.The book was based largely on data collected from major research project ostensibly developed to investgate juvenile delinquency but was,in realty a vehicle to study the social structure of Chicago's entire black community (Cayton-Warner Research Project).Still considered a landmark study,Black-Metropolis won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for best book published on race relations.During his career,Horace was a columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier,wrote articles and reviews for numerous major publications,and served as director of Chicago's Parkway Community Center.He rarely visted Seattle after his orginal departure.He died in Paris while attending to gather data for a Richard Wright biography.