WHY BLACK PEOPLE TEND TO SHOUT! AN EARNEST ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE SOCIOLOGICAL NEGATION OF THE ATLANTA SOCIOLOGICAL LABORATORY DESPITE ITS POSSIBLE UNPLEASANTNESS

Abstract

The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, 1895-1924, comprised the first American school of sociology (Wright 2002). Despite this fact, the sociological accomplishments of this group of scholars are relatively absent from the existing sociological literature. Data collected for this investigation indicate that the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory has been rendered sociologically invisible because of race prejudice, the perception that the school's findings were ungeneralizable, that their methods of research unsophisticated and of low quality, and that they omitted theory from their analyses. The findings of this investigation indicate that the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory utilized a sophisticated methodology to produce generalizable findings that included theory despite the race prejudice that existed during that period in American history.