E. Franklin Frazier and Black Bourgeoisie by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780826263490
Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Reflections on Frazier’s Ideas

Let me turn now to a more specific discussion of Frazier’s ideas and how Frazier’s intellectual work made a contribution that’s of some great importance in understanding the way the black community functioned in the past and the way the black community has functioned today.

Frazier was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He completed his education in the Baltimore public schools and enrolled at Howard in 1912, on the eve of World War I, and graduated with a B.A. (cum laude). In 1920, he attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and in 1931 received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. His teaching career began at Tuskegee, where he made connections with Booker T. Washington and Robert Park. He then moved to St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School in Virginia. After that he taught at Baltimore High School for a couple of years and then moved to Morehouse College for five years, becoming director of the Atlanta School of Social Work for three years. Later he was professor in the department of sociology at Fisk, leaving there to return to Howard, where he spent the last twenty-five years of his life with visiting professorships here and there. Frazier wrote ten books, which are still worthy of study. He also wrote eighteen chapters in books, eighty-nine articles, a pamphlet, and five unpublished manuscripts. All the time, of course, he was teaching the full load required of the faculty at Atlanta, Fisk, and at Howard. The important sidelights in Frazier’s career include a running battle with Melville Herskovits as to the extent and influence of African survivals in black American culture. One of the subthemes in Frazier’s writings was this nonstop, knock-down fight about the nature of the African American experience. Frazier was absolutely opposed to the view that there was anything African about African Americans. He would be just boneheaded about that. Lorenzo Turner, whose course on African culture and New World survivals I took at Roosevelt University, told of a trip to Bahia where when the drums and singing began and people started doing dances based on Yoruba dance forms, Mrs. Frazier looked up and said, that’s the kind of dance we used to do in North Carolina. And Frazier said, “NO, it couldn’t be,” and got up and walked out of the club. Professor Turner said, “And I was left with Mrs. Frazier’s company the rest of the evening.” Frazier would not admit into the dialog the question of the importance of Africa and African cultural values in Afro-American life. He had an interest in Africa and was one of the founding members of the African studies program at Howard. He was not anti-Africa, he was just opposed to making too much out of African cultural influences. That attitude was an important part of how he looked at the black middle class and how he conceptualized the way black Americans should develop.

Frazier was a socialist most of his life. He formed a socialist club at Howard

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