February 21, 2018 The Skanner BLACK HISTORY EDITION Page 5
Black History
Allison Davis: Forgotten Black Scholar Studied — and Faced —
Structural Racism in 1940s America
hen Black historian
Carter G. Woodson
founded Negro His-
tory Week in 1926
(expanded to Black History
Month in 1976), the prevailing
sentiment was that Vlack peo-
ple had no history. They were
little more than the hewers of
wood and the drawers of water
who, in their insistence upon
even basic political rights,
comprised an alarming “Negro
problem.”
To combat such ignorance
and
prejudice,
Woodson
worked relentlessly to compile
the rich history of Black peo-
ple. He especially liked to em-
phasize the role of exceptional
African Americans who made
major contributions to Ameri-
can life. At the time, that was a
radical idea.
W. Allison Davis (1902-1983)
came of age in the generation
after Woodson, but he was pre-
cisely the type of exceptional
Black person whom Woodson
liked to uphold as evidence of
Black intelligence, civility and
achievement.
Davis was an accomplished
anthropologist and a trailblaz-
er who was the first African
W
American to earn tenure at a
predominantly White univer-
sity – the University of Chica-
go in 1947. But Davis has faded
from popular memory. In my
book “The Lost Black Scholar:
Resurrecting Allison Davis in
American Social Thought,” I
make the case that he belongs
within the pantheon of illustri-
ous African-American – and
simply, American – pioneers.
Allison Davis, forgotten
pioneer
Allison Davis and his wife
Elizabeth Stubbs Davis were
among the first Black anthro-
pologists in the country. Bring-
ing their experiences on the
wrong side of the color line
to mainstream social science,
they made landmark contri-
butions to their field, includ-
ing “Deep South” (1941) and
“Children of Bondage” (1940).
Those books sold tens of thou-
sands of copies in the middle
decades of the 20th century;
they advanced social theory
by explaining how race and
class functioned as interlock-
ing systems of oppression;
and they broke methodologi-
cal ground in combining eth-
nography with psychological
assessments rarely applied in
those days.
Allison Davis’ extensive
body of research also had a
real impact on social policy. It
influenced the proceedings in
Brown v. Board of Education
(1954), undergirded the suc-
cess of the federal Head Start
program and prompted school
districts all across the country
to revise or reject intelligence
tests, which Davis had prov-
en to be culturally biased. His
“Social-Class Influences Upon
Learning” (1948) made the
most compelling case of that
era that intelligence tests dis-
criminated against lower-class
people.
Despite the very real advanc-
es that Davis helped to inspire
within American education in
the 20th century, today those
same accomplishments are at
risk. American schools remain
as racially segregated as ever
due to poverty and discrimi-
natory public policies. The in-
vestment in public education,
especially compensatory pro-
grams such as Head Start, looks
to further diminish amid the
growing support for privat-
ization, charter schools, and
school vouchers – or, the Betsy
“DeVos playbook,” as critics
describe it. To understand the
nature of these issues today,
one must understand their his-
CC BY-ND
By David Varel
The Conversation
Allison Davis, circa 1965. Courtesy of the Davis family.
tory, which Davis’ career helps
to illuminate.
Davis’ scholarly contribu-
tions are unquestionable when
considered now, many decades
later. But as the problems above
suggest, it is no longer enough
to simply celebrate exception-
al African-American pioneers
like Davis, or just give lip ser-
vice to their ideas. The next
step is confronting the circum-
stances that constrained their
lives. This means viewing
their experiences in relation
to the structural racism that
has shaped American life since
colonial times.
Bending – not breaking – aca-
demic color line
Consider Davis’ landmark
appointment to the Universi-
ty of Chicago. Fitting the sto-
ry into a master narrative of
racial progress obscures more
than it reveals. While the ap-
pointment did represent the
crossing of a racial boundary
and heralded the many more
barriers that would be chal-
lenged in the ensuing decades,
a closer look at the story gives
little reason to celebrate.
Like all Black scholars of his
time, Davis had to be twice
See DAVIS on page 6