Black Scholars on the Line

Black Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the Twentieth Century explores the development of American social science by highlighting the contributions of those scholars who were both students and objects of a segregated society. The book asks how segregation has influenced, and continues to influence, the development of American social thought and social science scholarship. Jonathan Scott Holloway and Ben Keppelpresent the work of twenty-eight black social scientists whose work was published between the rise of the Tuskegee model of higher education and the end of the Black Power Era. The intellectuals featured here produced scholarship that helped define the contours of the social sciences as they evolved over the course of the twentieth century. Theirs was the work of pioneers, now for the first time gathered in one anthology. Black Scholars on the Line is a wonderful contribution. As one who teaches black American intellectual history, I can attest to how useful it is to have these articles collected in one volume. Professors Holloway and Keppel are to be commended. They have chosen with intelligence and care, and their introductory essay situates their selections very helpfully. This book should do much to help recover for a new generation of scholars and students what was indeed the main trunk of black American intellectual discourse-and a primary domain of black Americans' civic debate-through the segregation era.-Adolph Reed Jr, University of Pennsylvania Jonathan Holloway and Ben Keppel have rendered a great service in bringing together the radiant social science scholarship of 20th-century African Americans. The 31 essays, deftly introduced, show the brilliance of under-appreciated black scholars who struggled to be heard across the color line.-Gary B. Nash, professor emeritus, UCLA