St. Clair Drake, the Chicago School, and the Emergence of a New Urban Black Perspective

Abstract

St. Clair Drake was responsible for a major shift in the way urban sociologists studied cities. While educated by Chicago school scholars in sociology and anthropology, such as Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Drake was one of many Black doctoral students who veered from the dominant perspective of his White teachers on race. His skills in ethnographic research were indebted not only to Park and Burgess, but also to the work of Black scholars who came before him, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier. His unique personal approach to cities and their racial problems transitioned into a more global focus on the Black diaspora, colonialism and the history of African people, and cultures which connected him to a world of social action.