"A FRONTAL ASSAULT ON ALL EFFORTS TO DENY AFRICAN AMERICANS FIRST-CLASS CITIZENSHIP": VERY SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF NEGRO AMERICAN FAMILY, 1909, NO. 13 IN THE ATLANTA UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS SERIES SPEARHEADED AND EDITED BY W.E.B. DU BOIS

DU BOIS, W. E. Burghardt, ed. The Negro American Family. Atlanta, Georgia: Atlanta University Press, 1908 (i.e. 1909). Octavo, original printed gray self-wrappers; pp. 156. $1600.

First edition of a pivotal work edited by Du Bois in the landmark Atlanta University Publication Series directed by him, fundamental to his creation of "the first American school of sociology," with 16 pages of illustrations, rare in original wrappers.

Du Bois sought "virtually every possible solution to the problem of 20th-century racism… he was possessed of a principled impatience with what he saw as the egregious failings of American democracy" (Blight, W.E.B. Du Bois, 713). On the night he died, in exile in Ghana, 250,000 Americans were gathering at the Lincoln Memorial in the 1963 March on Washington. The next day a deep silence fell over the crowd when Roy Wilkins announced the death of Du Bois, declaring "his was the voice calling you to gather here today in this cause." When Du Bois arrived in Georgia to join the Atlanta University faculty, he already had been the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard and "completed a pioneering sociological investigation," in The Philadelphia Negro (1898). His years in Atlanta "were, by his own admission, decisive ones… that placed him on the frontier of social science scholarship… although he was ignored by white Atlanta, his office on the university campus became the stopping-off point for the famous, influential, and merely curious" as he "organized a frontal assault on all efforts to deny African Americans first-class citizenship. In a real sense his tenure at Atlanta University was the final preparation for a career that ultimately touched several continents" (Gatewood, W.E.B. Du Bois, 206-8).

It was there that Du Bois created "the first American school of sociology." He edited the yearly Atlanta University Publications (1898-1909) and then co-edited four issues with Augustus Granville Dill (1910-13). When, in 1910, Du Bois saw "that his presence on the faculty of Atlanta University negatively affected the school's philanthropic outreach efforts… [he] chose to resign from the faculty" and became increasingly pivotal to the NAACP, which he cofounded. To historian Earl Wright II, Du Bois' legacy at Atlanta University also demonstrates how an "all-Back institution located in the heart of the Jim Crow American south… pushed back against individual and institutional forces demanding that it conform to racist policies." This very elusive first edition of Negro American Family "arguably represents the first scholarly sociological study of the family in the U.S." It notably draws on data from "local investigations conducted by Atlanta University students… [and] existing slavery literature… some of the slavery era data collected… were utilized to assess the structure and organization of African tribes prior to European contact" (First American School of Sociology, 81-89, 51, 49). In this momentous series, "Du Bois created sociological and historical works of lasting significance… [that] set wholly new standards for the sociological study of Black Americans" (New York Times). First edition: Atlanta University Publications, No. 13. Title page imprint: "1908; "Copyright, 1909, by Atlanta University" on copyright page. Containing 16 pages of illustrations, numerous in-text diagrams, graphs and charts. Partington 2338. Largely due to rarity, Blockson cites only a later reprint (Blockson 3451). Not in Work.

Text pristine, light expert restoration to fragile original wrappers, primarily to spine. A very elusive near-fine copy.