Barnes, Harry Elmer (15 June 1889–25 August 1968), historian and sociologist, was born on a farm near Auburn, New York, the son of William Henry Barnes, Jr., a farmer, teacher, and later a prison guard, and Lulu C. Short. After graduating from high school in 1906, Barnes spent several years as a construction laborer and principal of a two-room village school in Montezuma, a small canal town in central New York. From 1909 to 1913 he attended Syracuse University, from which he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history. From 1913 to 1915 Barnes was instructor in sociology and economics at Syracuse, which awarded him an M.A. for work on the development of social philosophy from Plato to Comte. From 1915 to 1917 he was a graduate student at Columbia University, during which time he held a fellowship that allowed him to research at Harrow University from fall 1916 through early spring 1917, and in the subsequent academic year he taught at Columbia and Barnard. In 1918 he received a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University; his dissertation focused on the history of the New Jersey prison system. In 1916 he married Grace Stone; they had one child. After divorcing Stone eleven years later, he married Jean Hutchison Newman in 1935....
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Barnes, Harry Elmer (1889-1968), historian and sociologist
Justus D. Doenecke
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Benjamin, Harry (1885-1986)
In
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Benjamin, Harry (1885-1986), physician, endocrinologist, and sex researcher
Keay Davidson
Benjamin, Harry (12 January 1885–24 August 1986), physician, endocrinologist, and sex researcher, was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Julius Benjamin, a banker, and Bertha Hoffman. He became interested in human sexuality at the age of twenty, when he read August Forel’s ...
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Brooks, John Graham (1846-1938), reformer and sociologist
James E. Mooney
Brooks, John Graham (19 July 1846–08 February 1938), reformer and sociologist, was born in Acworth, New Hampshire, the son of Chapin Kidder Brooks, a merchant, and Pamelia Graham. During his youth he worked at the store owned by his father, who also represented the town of Acworth in the state legislature. After graduating from Kimball Union Academy in 1866, Brooks attended the University of Michigan Law School but soon changed his mind about studying law. He left after a year and taught the next year on Cape Cod. In 1868, after a summer in Quebec perfecting his French, he enrolled in Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating in 1872 Brooks returned to New England and enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated with a degree in sacred theology in 1875. He was soon ordained and served as a Unitarian minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In addition to his pastoral duties, he involved himself in labor reform and organized classes in history and economics for the workingmen of the neighborhood. His liberal sermons attracted listeners from Cambridge and Beacon Hill. He was soon addressing informal groups on social problems. In 1880 he married the widow of another Unitarian minister, Helen Lawrence Appleton Washburn, who shared his reform impulses; they had three children....
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Cloward, Richard (1926-2001), sociologist, social worker, and an architect of the welfare rights movement
Tamar Carroll
Cloward, Richard (25 December 1926–20 August 2001), sociologist, social worker, and an architect of the welfare rights movement, was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Donald Cloward, a radical Baptist minister, and Ester Fleming, an artist and feminist. Donald Cloward had trained in the social gospel tradition at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and both he and Esther shared a passion for social justice, which they passed on to their son. Richard Cloward graduated from high school in Auburn, New York, in 1943 and served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy during World War II from 1944 to 1946. He received a B.A. in sociology from the University of Rochester in 1949. While attending the University of Rochester, Cloward cofounded an interracial day camp and a settlement house known as Hubbell House....
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Davis, Katharine Bement (1860-1935), social worker, prison reformer, and sex researcher
Sarah Stage
Davis, Katharine Bement (15 January 1860–10 December 1935), social worker, prison reformer, and sex researcher, was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Frances Bement and Oscar Bill Davis, a manager for the Bradstreet Company, precursor of Dun and Bradstreet, the credit rating firm. When her father suffered business reversals following the panic of 1873, Davis had to postpone plans for college and work as a public school teacher for ten years. She continued her studies independently and in 1890 entered Vassar College at the age of thirty, graduating two years later with honors....
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Du Bois, W. E. B. (1868-1963)
Maker: Carl Van Vechten
In
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Du Bois, W. E. B. (1868-1963), African-American activist, historian, and sociologist
Thomas C. Holt
Du Bois, W. E. B. (23 February 1868–27 August 1963), African-American activist, historian, and sociologist, was born William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Silvina Burghardt, a domestic worker, and Alfred Du Bois, a barber and itinerant laborer. In later life Du Bois made a close study of his family origins, weaving them rhetorically and conceptually—if not always accurately—into almost everything he wrote. Born in Haiti and descended from Bahamian mulatto slaves, Alfred Du Bois enlisted during the Civil War as a private in a New York regiment of the Union army but appears to have deserted shortly afterward. He also deserted the family less than two years after his son’s birth, leaving him to be reared by his mother and the extended Burghardt kin. Long resident in New England, the Burghardts descended from a freedman of Dutch slave origin who had fought briefly in the American Revolution. Under the care of his mother and her relatives, young Will Du Bois spent his entire childhood in that small western Massachusetts town, where probably fewer than two-score of the 4,000 inhabitants were African American. He received a classical, college preparatory education in Great Barrington’s racially integrated high school, from whence, in June 1884, he became the first African-American graduate. A precocious youth, Du Bois not only excelled in his high school studies but contributed numerous articles to two regional newspapers, the Springfield ...
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Haynes, George Edmund (11 May 1880–08 January 1960)
Maker: Laura Wheeler Waring
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George Edmund Haynes (11 May 1880–08 January 1960), by Laura Wheeler Waring, c. 1948
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Haynes Family
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Haynes, George Edmund (11 May 1880–08 January 1960), sociologist and social worker
Edgar Allan Toppin
Haynes, George Edmund (11 May 1880–08 January 1960), sociologist and social worker, was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the son of Louis Haynes, an occasional laborer, and Mattie Sloan, a domestic servant. He was raised by devout, hard-working, poorly educated parents. His mother stressed that education and good character were paths to improvement. She moved with Haynes and his sister to Hot Springs, a city with better educational opportunities than Pine Bluff. Haynes attended Fisk University, completing his B.A. in 1903. His record at Fisk enabled him to go to Yale, where he earned an M.A. in sociology in 1904. He also won a scholarship to Yale’s Divinity School but withdrew early in 1905 to help fund his sister’s schooling....
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Kerby, William Joseph (1870-1936), Catholic priest and promoter of professional social work
Robert Trisco
Kerby, William Joseph (20 February 1870–27 July 1936), Catholic priest and promoter of professional social work, was born in Lawler, Iowa, the son of Irish immigrants Daniel P. Kerby, a prosperous banker, and Ellen Rockford. One of ten children, he attended St. Joseph’s (now Loras) College in Dubuque. After graduating in 1889, he entered St. Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Dubuque on 21 December 1892. He then continued the study of theology at the recently opened Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where the relatively liberal Belgian professor ...
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Lumpkin, Katharine Du Pre (1897-1988), reformer and author
Jacquelyn D. Hall
Lumpkin, Katharine Du Pre (22 December 1897–05 May 1988), reformer and author, was born in Macon, Georgia, the daughter of William Wallace Lumpkin, a railroad employee, and Annette Caroline Morris. Both parents were the offspring of planters who lost their fortunes in the Civil War. Annette Lumpkin had taught school briefly before she married, and her learning, Katharine wrote later in ...
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Pruette, Lorine Livingston (3 Nov. 1896–20 Dec. 1976), psychologist, social scientist, and feminist
Mary K. Trigg
Pruette, Lorine Livingston (3 Nov. 1896–20 Dec. 1976), psychologist, social scientist, and feminist, was born in Millersburg, Tennessee to Eulalia Miller Pruette, a former schoolteacher, and Oscar Davis Pruette, a gentleman farmer. Raised a daughter of the South, Pruette spent her first five years in a small cottage on one hundred acres where her father raised pigs, hens, cattle, and horses. This first home was isolated and rural, and her parents’ marriage was contentious. Pruette later recalled her childhood as lonely and described herself as “the odd ball” (Trigg, p. 37)....
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Roberts, Peter (1859-1932), minister, sociologist, and educator
Thomas Winter
Roberts, Peter (26 August 1859–02 December 1932), minister, sociologist, and educator, was born in Dowlais, South Wales, Great Britain, the son of John Roberts and Elizabeth Davis Roberts. Information about his early life is extremely limited. According to one source, Roberts worked as a coal miner and as a blacksmith's apprentice in his youth. He went to school at Glangadog, South Wales, and received his B.A. at Brecon Memorial College, Wales, in 1883. In the same year, Roberts immigrated to the United States, where he attended Yale University. Graduating with a bachelor of divinity degree in 1886, he delivered the commencement address....
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Taft, Jessie (1882-1960), sociologist, social worker, and educator
Mary Jo Deegan
Taft, Jessie (24 June 1882–07 June 1960), sociologist, social worker, and educator, was born Julia Taft in Dubuque, Iowa, the daughter of Charles Chester Taft and Amanda May Farwell. Her parents came from Vermont but moved to rural Iowa, where her father became a prosperous merchant. Her mother was deaf, and this disability plus personality differences created a barrier between them. Jessie enjoyed school and music, graduating from West Des Moines High School, and independently chose to become a Unitarian....
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Woods, Robert Archey (1865-1925), social reformer, educator, and writer
Clyde O. McDaniel
Woods, Robert Archey (09 December 1865–18 February 1925), social reformer, educator, and writer, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Robert Woods, a businessman and founder of the United Presbyterian Church in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, a section of Pittsburgh, and Mary Ann Hall. At age sixteen he entered Amherst College, where he met ...
