In Black America; The ASA, with Dr. Aldon D. Morris, Part I

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. He calls sociology tell with racism, sexism, mass incarceration, income, wealth, inequality, poverty, violence, mental illness and so on. I said that that's what I think I want to do. I think I want to become a sociologist. By the way, before I took this sociology class, I had this class in psychology and I thought I wanted to become a psychiatrist. Because I've always been interested in people and what makes them tick and that kind of thing. And so, but I was also very interested in social movements because they were happening all around me on my campus. And so, when I went to this class in psychology, they had us cutting up rats and so forth. And I was like, somehow, there was a disconnect here. This is not what I would have studied.

And then I took the sociology class and became hooked on sociology from then and the rest of history. Dr. Alden Morris, the Leon Force Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Northwestern University. An author of the scholar denied W.E.B. Du Bois and the birth of modern sociology and president-elect of the American Sociological Association. Morris will be the 112th president of the association. Founded in 1909, the American Sociological Association currently has over 13,000 members. The association publishes 10 professional journals and magazines. Oftentimes, the contribution of African-American sociologists and intellectuals who influence the development of the field are ignored by and excluded from standing tellings of the history of sociology. I'm Johnny Ohanton Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Dr. Alden Morris, the Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies,

had Northwestern University and president-elect of the American Sociological Association in Black America. Many of the early white sociologists were actually quite racist and they preached that in the many ways that black people were inferior. And therefore, they deserve to be at the bottom of the society because of their meager talents and intellect. They did not pay much attention to the horrific Jim Crow period, a period of slavery and so on. What that means is that factors like oppression and discrimination and terror and so forth did not figure into their analysis about why black people face so much hell while they were poor and while they were at the bottom of society. And this might be of interest to you, but the first two sociology books were actually written on race were actually written by two, I believe they were quite Mississippi. Established in 1905 by a small group led by Lester Ward, William Graham, Subna, Franklin Jennings, and Albion Small at the meeting of the American Economic Association.

The American Sociological Association held its first meeting the following year in Providence, Rhode Island. The membership in 1906 stood at 115. For the first several decades, the activities of the society were centered on publishing a journal holding an annual meeting and performing various administrative functions such as record-keeping, sending out communications, and so forth. In 1949, the first executive officer was appointed on a part-time basis, and in 1963, the Association established its permanent headquarters in Washington, D.C. Since the organization was founded, there has only been three African-American presidents prior to Moore's election. Dr. Alden Moore's will be the 112th president of the American Sociological Association. He was served one year as president-elect and then become president of the Association in August 2020. He has taught at Northwestern University since 1988.

I was born and raised in Tuckwiler, Mississippi, then I left, and when I was 12, 13 years old and moved to Chicago, and I lived in Chicago most of my life, I'm currently in Chicago, went to school in Peoria, Illinois. I don't long Island, New York, first job at the University of Michigan, which I stayed for about eight years, and then I moved to Northwestern University, and I've been there ever since, came to Northwestern in 1988. Give us an idea about your childhood. Oh, my childhood. Well, I was born in Jim Crow, Mississippi. I remember that. I was just a boy. I was six years old when Emmett Till was lynched. He was lynched only about 20 miles from where we lived, lived with my grandparents. And it had a tremendous impact on me and my generation. Some of us now refer to it as the Emmett Till generation. And I remember going to the colored school, having to sit on the back of buses, drink from colored water fountains, and to be insulted in all kinds of ways, especially my grandparents, who were very strong people.

As a boy, I didn't understand why they were being called a boy and aunt and all of this kind of stuff. And so I experienced Jim Crow racism in the heart of the South and rural Mississippi. And then, of course, we were my mother and her siblings almost all of them had been part of the Greek migration. And so they always lived in Chicago, St. Louis, and Milwaukee, Detroit, other places. And so as a little boy, I thought that the North was really the promised land that there were really gold, streets, and milk, and honey, and all of that. And I also knew that I was going to come to Chicago once my elderly grandparents passed. And when they did, I was shocked with a double dose of new racism, the Northern version. And so I went to finish the elementary school in Chicago, went to community college in Chicago, worked in factories in Chicago, and experienced a great deal of racism in Chicago.

And of course, this was the early 70s, late 60s, the civil rights movement was still going on, the black power movement in particular was raging. And so I also grew up with a sense that the change could happen because I witnessed those movements. And when I saw on television what was happening in the civil rights movement and all, I grew up with a lot of hope. I thought we were going to change this thing. I had no idea that we would be where we are here in the 21st century. We've been in Chicago during the radio station, WBONs, high days, and Elijah Mohammed, and Jesse Jackson, Operation Push, and Mayor Daley. Tell us about that experience. It was a very rich, rich experience. By the time I was in Chicago, well, I witnessed a lot of the civil rights movement in the March on Washington and the Birmingham confrontation on television because I was in Chicago. I was deeply influenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. And then of course, here in Chicago, Jesse Jackson was his protege. And so, you know, I participated in protests and marches and so on that involved him.

And many, many others, but Chicago was a very, very rich kind of environment. Like now, it has some of the best and the worst tendencies of America. And I went to a predominantly white high school where we were not as black people, black students. We were not considered to be smart. We were not considered to be college materials. And so we weren't prepared. They did not teach us to be those things. Yes, I mean, you could drive down one street in that park and you'd be in front of Elijah Mohammed's house and you could go on the little bit east and you would be at Jesse Jackson headquarters. And so, you know, Operation Bread, Baskin, all of that. I do vaguely remember when Dr. King brought the movement to Chicago in 1966. And there were marches for fair housing. And it was some of the most racist outpouring that the nation had ever seen. And one of those marches, Dr. King was hit upside the head with a brick. And he said that, you know, I've been in Birmingham and I've been in Montgomery. I've been in Mississippi, but I've never seen the kind of racism that I'm experiencing here in Chicago.

So it was a mixed kind of background up here. I mean, on the one hand, it was a vibrant, strong, rich black community. You know, we had Ebony and Jett and all of the black businesses and so on. And we had so many movements going on and leaders, both young and old. I was in community college when Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were assassinated. They were black panthers. And that was the first time I saw Jesse Jackson in person. He came to my community college, Southeast Junior College and he spoke to us. And I was like, wow, man, this is one of the most powerful individuals and voices I ever heard. And so I remained active and so on in movements, but also, you know, had never, no one in my immediate family had never gone to college. So I didn't have any plans to go to college. And then the Vietnam War started raging. And I was working in and speals warehouse and I knew I didn't want to go to Vietnam.

And I ended up going to a community college because then you could get for West deferment, which kept you out of the service for a little while. So I did that and that was so that was the very beginning of my college experience. I, in fact, was somewhat afraid to go to community college because, you know, come being the first generation student. I thought that everybody was going to be so much smarter than me and then I was going to say things and get laughed at and all of that. But I went on. There was still more killing attractive to me than going to Vietnam. And so I went to a community college and I started reading Du Bois and Margaret Walker and David Walker Appeal and all that kind of stuff. And I got hooked on college. And then I was sneaking books. I started working in a national Harvard student. I was sneaking books and read when nobody was looking and so on.

And then went from there, left factory, went to Bradley University in Peoria, had some really good professors that they talked me into going to Grand School to get a PhD. I thought they were crazy talking about that. And of course, I went on to the State University of New York and where I did receive a PhD in sociology. I shouldn't say receive. I earned a PhD in sociology. And one of the things that I see now is that having gone to a community college, having gone to a four year college predominantly white, having gone to a white university where they had all kinds of graduate programs that I learned one thing. That is that intelligence is truly randomly distributed. That means that intelligence does not concentrate in any population with a white, black, poor, anything. That the real problem for so many people like me was really a lie of opportunities. And so that's one of the things that I try to give back to my community. I still go back over to the community college where I started and try to make some contributions there.

When you decided to major in sociology, was that prior to you reading about W.E.B. Du Bois? Yes. Actually, I took this class and community college. It was taught by this like man. At that time, I was young, so he looked elderly, but he probably wasn't that old. But anyway, he was from the South. And I did not think that it was going to be a great class. And so we came in on the first day and he stood up and looked around at all the students and he said, yeah, you know, when a black professor get up in front of a class, everybody stopped pulling for him. For him, thinking that he doesn't know his stuff. He said, well, you can forget it right now. I know what I'm doing. And from there, it was a sociologic call at that time. The black man in the United States. And this guy, this professor was just simply mesmerizing. And I learned, you know, that's where I really started learning about the society as well as the role of black people within it, the oppression, the social movements that were happening.

And he was the one that came to me and said, look, you're going to get an associate of arts degree from here, but you should go on to a four year college. You have no excuse but to do that. So he impressed me and then I went on and then I had other progressive professors at the undergraduate level who also convinced me that I should go on and get a PhD. But I fell in love with sociology precisely because it dealt with issues that we were experiencing. It was the first time that we were studying social movements. And one of my areas of expertise now is social movements. That's my first book that I wrote was on the Civil Rights Movement. And because sociology dealt with racism, with sexism, mass incarceration, income, and wealth, inequality, poverty, violence, mental illnesses on. And I said that that's what I think I want to do. I think I want to become a sociologist.

By the way, before I took this sociology class, I had this class in psychology and I thought I wanted to become a psychiatrist because I've always been interested in people and what makes them tick and that kind of thing. But I was also very interested in social movements because they were happening all around me on my campus. So when I went to this class in psychology, they had us cutting up rats and so forth. And I was like, somehow there was a disconnect here. This is not what I would have studied. And then I took the sociology class and became hooked on sociology from then and the rest of history. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Johansson Jr. and you're listening to In Black America from KUG Radio. And we speak with Dr. Alden Morris, the Leon Force Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University and President-elect of the American Sociological Association. Dr. Morris, we spoke yesterday and then I started doing a lot of homework. I think you are the fourth African American to become president of the Sociological Association.

Yes, I'm the fourth black president. I'm the fourth black person to come president. Right, because Patricia was the first in 2008 where I'm going. I don't know. Go ahead. I mean first woman. To the first woman. In 2008. But it's only been one woman. Exactly. And in 2008, I think you said you've done your homework. Are you right? But the first black, so there have been three black men, including me as the latest one. The first black man to become president of the American Sociological Association was Eve Franklin Frazier in 1948. The sociologist that wrote that famous book called the Black bourgeoisie in many of the studies. And that was in 1948. And the American Sociological Association was founded in 1905, so you can see how long it took. But then there was not another black person who became president of AFA. We call it AFA until 1992. And that was William Julius Wilson, who got famous when he wrote this book called The Declined in Significance of Race.

And that was in 1992. And then Patricia Hill Collins, as you said, the first black woman. And I think was 2008. And we had only one of a black man. His name is Troy Duster. And Troy Duster is a famous sociologist. He's actually the great grandson of Ida B. Wells. And so then you can see that out of the 112 presidents, only four have been black. And we did have a Puerto Rican who is in many respects black. So you could say five. But the American Sociological Association has been an organization dominated by whites in particular white males. White women broke in about 20, 25 years ago. And now they actually constitute a small majority of the membership. And they are very, very active. But yes, the many of the early white sociologists were actually quite racist. And they preach that in the many ways that black people were inferior. And therefore they deserve to be at the bottom of the society because of their meager talents and intellect.

So they did not pay much attention to the horrific Jim Crow period, period of slavery and so on. And so what that means is that factors like oppression and discrimination and terror and so forth did not figure into their analysis about why black people face so much hell while they were poor and why they were at the bottom of society. And this might be of interest to you, but the first two sociology books were actually written on race were actually written by two, I believe they were white, Mississippi. And they outright praising slavery, making the argument that slavery was actually good for black people because it allowed them to rub shoulders with their racial superiors, that is the whites in the slavery context. And so then so sociology came out of a pretty racist context, although there were always some progressive voices.

It started to change now, like people and other people of color and some progressive white, we demand change. And we, and so yes, you probably know change does not happen simply because people wanted to happen. You have to be involved in movements and protests and disruption and forced change. And so that's what we're doing in the, what we have done in the American Sociological Association. In fact, in 1968, black people, black sociologists rebelled because they were being discriminated against in the American Sociological Association. And they created it at that time in 1968, what was called the black caucus. And the black caucus evolved into the association of black sociologists. It's a very vibrant organization. I'm still really involved. I was president of it back in the, in the 90s. And so, so we've had a little fun saying that Elder Morse has been both president of the Association of Black Sociologists and now the American Sociological Association.

What led you to become part of the leadership? I've been involved in, in the American Sociological Association from almost beginning of graduate school. I've been on a lot of committees and so forth. So I kind of knew how it worked. Also, you don't, you don't become president of the ASA because you decide you want to be president. What happens is that there's a nominating committee and they nominate all of the people who run for high office. So I had to be nominated to run. And what that means is that, generally speaking, you have to be somebody that's well known because of your published works. And so when I published the origins of the Civil Rights Movement in 18, I mean in 1984, that book put me on the map. It won the Best Book Award from ASA. And so people got to know me and all. And then I published a lot of other things in the meantime.

And then four years ago, in 2015, I published this book called The Scholar Denied, W. B. Du Bois, and The Birth of Modern Sociology. And I want your audience to know that you got in touch with me and wanted to interview me when the book came out. And there were a number of people who did it by distinctively remembering our conversation and so forth. So I want to thank you for helping to publicize the book. And the book has made an enormous splash impact in sociology and so it made me much better known in position to run. John, I actually ran for the president of ASA in 2013 and lost. I didn't think I would ever really run again. And then the circumstances became favorable. And people started asking me if I was nominated when I run. And I said, probably not. And then a lot of people, good friends and colleagues and people that I really respect said that they thought it was my duty to run that I had a shot that I could win. So I ended up doing so and so. But the other thing you asked me about why did I get involved in the leadership? I've always felt as long as I can remember now is that like people should get into the leadership of as many organizations that they can as many societies that they can and exercise influence.

I am so cognizant of the fact that for most, for many, many years, we couldn't even attend these kinds of meetings. We couldn't even dream of becoming the president of something like ASA. And I am so acutely aware of all of the prices that people pay for folks like me to be able to take over leadership positions. I mean, people like mega-evils and Fannie Lou Hamon, all these people going back to Frederick Douglass and how to be well. And all these people and so I think that it is our responsibility to see as much leadership as we can for the purpose of trying to generate more. For social change. And so that those were the motivations that caused me to run and then to be elected as president of American Sociological Association.

Why is it important for in general the populations to understand sociology and the human condition, but in particular African Americans to have an understanding that the larger population should understand and to some extent appreciate. Very, very excellent question. The sociology is a field of study that focuses on the study of society all the way from nations to intimate relationships, say between two people. And the idea of sociology is to study and understand society in all of their complexity to understand how human beings interact with each other, to understand how governments worked, to understand how the military works, to understand how oppression works. And so if you are a member of the group who have been very oppressed in society, one of the first things you need to do is to come to understand how that oppression operates because you cannot overthrow something that you don't really know how it operates.

And so from the early days of black sociologist studied discrimination and oppression and not only racial oppression, but class, class inequality, poverty, which is a central part of oppression. And they studied this because they came up in the days of Jim Crow lynching, Debbie B. Du Bois, who was the first black sociologist, witnessed the aftermath of a lynching when he was in Atlanta, Georgia in 1906 that deeply affected him. So the crux of the matter is that we study sociology because we want to understand how power works, we want to understand how inequality works, we want to understand how racism works. And another thing we really want to understand too is how social movements work. Think about this, black people are where we are now because of the civil rights movement. And that's one of the reasons why I studied this movement because I wanted to understand what are the sources of power that came out of this movement.

And simple words, how did Martin Luther King and all these ordinary people, how did they do that? How did they pull off this powerful movement, this shook up America and indeed shook up the world. And studying that movement, I came to really realize how powerful the black church was in the movement by supplying money and leadership and culture and so on and so forth. I came to understand the resiliency of black people themselves and how creative they are and that if only we study our history and so forth, it will provide, provide keys to us for change. Let me give you one example of this is that in 1935, W.B. Du Bois wrote this famous book called Black Reconstruction. And before that, black reconstruction was seen as a period in which black people were more degenerates, how they drove the nation into all kinds of poverty and the worst society that could have been. Du Bois studied the black reconstruction came out, came out with a totally different analysis that revealed the creativity and the power and the insights that black people brought to America during the reconstruction period.

And Alden Morris, the Leon Force Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University, and President-elect of the American Sociological Association. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions asked your future in black America programs, email us at inblackamerica.ut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and the follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs. KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in black America CDs, KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712.

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