Edward Franklin Frazier (September 24, 1894 – May 17, 1962), was an American sociologist and author... His 1932 Ph.D.
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dissertation was published as a book titled The Negro Family in the United States (1939); it analyzed the historical forces that influenced the development of the African-American family from the time of slavery to the mid-1930s…
In 1948 Frazier was elected as the
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first [Black] president of the American Sociological Association…
Frazier wrote a dozen books in his lifetime, including The Black Bourgeoisie, a critique of the [Black] middle class in which he questioned the effectiveness of African-American businesses to produce
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racial equality.
Biography
Frazier was born in Baltimore in 1894 as one of five children of James H. Frazier, a bank messenger, and Mary (Clark) Frazier, a homemaker. He attended the Baltimore public schools, which were legally segregated in those decades.
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Upon his graduation in 1912 from the Colored High and Training School in Baltimore… Frazier was awarded the school's annual scholarship to Howard University, a prominent historically [Black] college.
He graduated with honors from Howard in 1916. Frazier was a top scholar,
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pursuing Latin, Greek, German and mathematics. He also participated in extracurricular activities including drama, political science, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. He was elected as
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class president in both 1915 and 1916.
Following graduation from Howard, Frazier 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.
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During his time at Clark, Frazier first began to study sociology, combining his approach with his deep interest in African-American history and culture…
Frazier taught sociology at Morehouse College, a historically [Black] institution in Atlanta, where he established
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what is known in the 21st century as the Atlanta University School of Social Work. In 1927 Frazier published his article titled "The Pathology of Race Prejudice" in Forum. Using Freudian terms, he wrote that prejudice was "abnormal behavior," characteristic of "insanity,"
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including dissociation, delusional thinking, rationalization, projection, and paranoia. White people in the South, he argued, were literally driven mad by the "Negro-complex," to the point that "men and women who are otherwise kind and law-abiding will indulge in the
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most revolting forms of cruelty towards [Black People]."
An Atlanta paper carried an editorial against Frazier's work, which indirectly publicized his article. Already planning to move to Chicago, Frazier and his family left Atlanta early because of
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severe threats made against them due to the controversy and hostility among whites generated by his article…
Frazier was also teaching at Fisk University during this period, from 1929 to 1934. That year he returned to Howard University, where he taught from 1934 until
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his death in 1962. After founding and leading the D.C. chapter of the American Sociological Association, Frazier was elected as its first [Black] president in 1948…
Frazier's position emphasized
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African-American cultural developments as a process of accommodation to new conditions in the Americas. Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie, the 1957 [english] translation of a work first published in French in 1955, was a critical examination of the
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adoption by middle-class African Americans of a subservient conservatism. His book received "mixed reviews and harsh criticism from the [Black] middle and professional class. Yet Frazier stood solidly by his argument that the [Black] middle class was marked by
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conspicuous consumption, wish fulfillment, and a world of make-believe."
…Some of Frazier's writings generated controversy in the [Black] community for their focus on the effects of slavery and how it divided the [Black] family. During the McCarthy era, when there was conservative political pressure against liberals, Frazier supported civil rights for African American.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Franklin_Frazier
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Audubon Ballroon (he/him)