Ira De Augustine Reid facts for kids
Ira De Augustine Reid (born July 2, 1901 – died August 15, 1968) was an important sociologist and writer. He wrote a lot about the lives of black immigrants and communities in the United States. He also helped shape the field of educational sociology, which looks at how education affects society. He taught at Atlanta University, New York University, and Haverford College. He was one of the very few African American professors at white colleges in the U.S. during a time when schools were often "separate but equal" (meaning segregated).
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About Ira De Augustine Reid
His Early Life and Family
Ira De Augustine Reid was born in Clifton Forge, Virginia. His father was a Baptist minister. Ira grew up in Harrisburg and Germantown, Philadelphia, where he went to schools that had both black and white students.
While studying at the University of Pittsburgh, Reid met Gladys Russell Scott. They got married and adopted a child together. In 1950, Reid and his wife joined the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. Reid was very active in their educational work. After Gladys died in 1956, Reid married Anna "Anne" Margaret Cooke in 1958. He passed away in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on August 15, 1968.
His Education Journey
Reid went to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. The college president, John Hope, personally encouraged him to attend. Reid earned his first degree, a Bachelor of Arts, in 1922. He then continued his studies at the University of Pittsburgh, getting his Master of Arts in Social Economics in 1925. Later, in 1939, he earned his PhD in Sociology from Columbia University.
His Career and Work
After graduating from Morehouse College, Reid started his career teaching sociology and history at Texas College. He then taught social science for a year at Douglas High School in Huntington, West Virginia.
From 1924 to 1928, Reid worked for the New York branch of the National Urban League. This organization helps African Americans achieve equality. He started as an apprentice and then became an industrial secretary, working with Charles S. Johnson. They gathered information for a big meeting called the National Interracial Conference in 1928, held in Washington, DC. Reid later took over from Johnson as the director of research and editor of the Urban League's magazine, Opportunity.
In 1934, Reid became a sociology professor at Atlanta University. He was hired by W.E.B. Du Bois, a very famous scholar. While at Atlanta University, Reid started the People's College in 1942, which was a program for adult education. From 1944 to 1946, he led the Sociology department. He also edited the journal Phylon: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture from 1944 to 1948.
After that, Reid spent a year as a visiting professor at New York University. He taught educational psychology. He was the first black full-time professor at a white university in the northern United States during the "separate but equal" era.
With help from the American Friends Service Committee, Reid joined the faculty at Haverford College in 1947. He was the first black professor there. In 1948, he became the head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He stayed at Haverford until he retired in 1966. During these years, he also taught at other universities and advised many groups working on sociology and education. He was an assistant editor for the American Sociological Review and an officer for important sociological groups.
Facing Challenges: The McCarthy Era
During the 1950s, a time known as the McCarthy Era, the United States government became suspicious of people they thought had "communist sympathies." Because of his research, the United States Department of State took away Reid's passport from 1952 to 1954. Reid strongly disagreed with these accusations and successfully got his passport back.
His Lasting Impact
Haverford College's Black Cultural Center is named after Ira De Augustine Reid. It was rededicated in his honor in February 2013. The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture keeps a collection of Reid's writings and letters that were never published.
Ira Reid's Important Ideas
His Studies and Writings
While working at the Urban League, Reid did many studies about African American communities across the United States, especially in Harlem. He also worked on many other sociological topics.
Reid wrote a lot about different subjects. He is especially known for his work on immigrants from the West Indies, as well as his studies on young people and the sociology of education. A Swedish historian named Gunnar Myrdahl used Reid's early studies of African American city life for his famous book, An American Dilemma.
After the important 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which said that segregated schools were illegal, Reid edited a special issue of a journal called the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. This issue, published in March 1956, was all about "Racial Desegregation and Integration."
Stephen H. Sachs, who was a student of Reid's at Haverford College, wrote about him in 2016. He said that Ira Reid's sociology class was the most exciting one. He described Reid as a thought-provoking teacher who made students think deeply about ideas like how much our genes versus our environment affect us.
Selected Publications
- The Negro Population of Albany, New York (1928)
- Negro in American Civilization: A Study of Negro Life and Race Relations in the Light of Social Research (1930) (with Charles Spurgeon Johnson)
- Social Conditions of the Negro in the Hill District of Pittsburgh (1930)
- Negro Membership in American Labor Unions (1930)
- The Negro Community of Baltimore—Its Social and Economic Conditions (1935)
- Adult Education Among Negroes (1936)
- The Urban Negro Worker in the United States, 1925-1936 (vol. 1, 1938)
- The Negro Immigrant: His Background, Characteristics and Social Adjustment, 1899-1937 (1939)
- In a Minor Key: Negro Youth in Story and Fact (1940)
- Sharecroppers All (1941), with Arthur Raper
