Franklin Frazier

Edward Franklin Frazier (/ˈfreɪʒər/; September 24, 1894 – May 17, 1962), was an American sociologist and author, publishing as E. Franklin Frazier. His 1932 Ph.D. dissertation was published as a book titled The Negro Family in the United States (1939); it analyzed the historical forces that influenced the development of the African-American family from the time of slavery to the mid-1930s. The book was awarded the 1940 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for the most significant work in the field of race relations. It was among the first sociological works on blacks researched and written by a black person.

In 1948 Frazier was elected as the first black president of the American Sociological Association. He published numerous other books and articles on African-American culture and race relations. In 1950 Frazier helped draft the UNESCO statement The Race Question.

Frazier wrote a dozen books in his lifetime, including The Black Bourgeosie, a critique of the black middle class in which he questioned the mythical powers of African-American businesses to produce about racial equality.

Frazier was born in Baltimore in 1894 as one of five children of James H. Frazier, a bank messenger, and Mary (Clark) Frazier, a homemaker. He attended the Baltimore public schools, which were legally segregated in those decades. Upon his graduation in 1912 from the Colored High and Training School in Baltimore (renamed in 1923 as Frederick Douglass High School), Frazier was awarded the school's annual scholarship to Howard University, a prominent historically black college.

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