E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962): A Profile

Abstract

Our Scottish heart warms to the story of a boy of humble family, inspired by his parents with reverence for education, who, on the early death of his father, by his own perseverance and with the loving encouragement of his mother, pursues his studies, supporting himself by menial tasks, through school and University. This is part of the story of Professor Frazier, but he as a Negro, the grandson of a freed slave, had a longer and more difficult path to tread, . . . at times facing the hostility of patrons who, although benevolent to the Negro in general, frowned on him as being not the proper type of Negro. The late E. Franklin Frazier, Professor of Sociology at Howard University, was certainly not a proper Negro. He was the author of seven full-length works and 108 published articles, pamphlets, and chapters in the works of other scholars, most of them dealing with the Negro