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Civil War Ends
Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House -
W.E.B. Du Bois Born
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born to Alfred and Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868 -
Tuskegee Institute Founded
Founded in Tuskegee, Alabama by former slaves, elect young Booker T. Washington to spearhead the development of an institution that would equip black artisans with industrial skills. -
Graduates Fisk
Du Bois Graduates from historically black institution, Fisk University in Nashville, TN -
Received Doctorate from Harvard
Du Bois is the First African American to receive PhD from Harvard University, -
Philadelphia Negro Published
During a post-doc at the University of Pennsylvania, Du Bois wrote the first systematic study of the conditions black workers faced in the industrial North -
Du Bois Joins Atlanta University
Du Bois joins Atlanta University as professor of economics and history, but quickly sets an agenda for an emergent sociology department and social science laboratory. -
Munroe Work Joins Savannah State
A leading empirical social scientist and student of Du Bois, Work published on black crime in Chicago and beyond. Ultimately joined the Tuskegee Institute in 1908 to found the Department of Records and Research -
Antagonism mounts with Booker T. Washington
"If Atlanta University intends to stand for Dr. Du Bois' outgivings, if it means to seek to destroy Tuskegee, it is engaged in poor business to start with... Tuskegee will go on" ~ Booker T. Washington, open letter in a newspaper, 1903 -
Du Bois Publishes 'The Souls of Black Folk'
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Frank Sanborn participates in the Atlanta Conference
Having been one of the 'secret six' who had helped finance the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Sanborn brought the 'old line abolitionist' philosophy to the conference Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Benjamin_Sanborn -
Walter Wilcox invited to the Atlanta Conference
Despite profoundly different views (believing that Darwinian 'natural selection' would eventually render the inferior race extinct), Du Bois invited renowned Cornell statistician, Walter Wilcox to hte conference. -
First meeting of the American Sociological Society
Ward, Giddings and others founded the American Sociological Society, conspicuously neglecting to invite Du Bois Photo: Lester Frank Ward, Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lester_Frank_Ward.jpg -
Franz Boas participates in the Atlanta Conferences
German-American anthropologist brought scientific rigour to anthropology and documented how sophistication of ancient African kingdoms, disproving the sense of historic inferiority that prevailed in white scholarship Photo: Cosmos Magazine https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/anthropology/franz-boas-takes-a-new-look-at-race/ -
Richard Wright, Jr. earns doctorate in sociology
Richard Wright, Jr. is the first African-American to earn a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania photo: https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/wright/ill259a.html -
George Edmund Haynes earns doctorate at Columbia
Heynes was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Columbia. His work led him to become the special assistant to the secretary of labor in 1918 -
Mary White Ovington publishes "Half a Man" The status of the Negro in New York
Ovington became an active participant in the Atlanta Conferences and helped found the NAACP -
Booker T. Washington and Robert E. Park write "The Man Farthest Down"
Prior to joining the Sociology Department at Chicago, Park spent several years traveling and ghostwriting with Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee -
Photo Credits
Unless Otherwise Noted, Photographs have been obtained from the Digital Commonwealth Archives available at:
https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/ -
Robert E. Park publishes on the CIty
Robert E Park viewed black populations as 'primitives,' 'folk people,' 'aliens,' and savages, saying it was "difficult to conceive tow races farther removed in temperament and tradition than the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro" (119). His project on exploring urban social conditions, then, appears in direct opposition to Du Bois -
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America Published
Heralded as the first great empirical study of American sociology, this piece established Chicago as the leader in the emerging discipline -
Park and Burgess Publish the 'Green Bible'
