Aldon Morris's justly praised The Scholar Denied makes three major contributions. First, it establishes that W. E. B. Du Bois was a great and pioneering sociologist. Du Bois was innovative as both an empirical researcher and a social theorist. He was the author of the landmark study The Philadelphia Negro (1901), and several other lesser-known but important works. Morris argues that Du Bois deserves pride of place among American social scientists in discrediting biological conceptions of race and showing that “racial hierarchies rested on edifices of power, discrimination, and entrenched oppression” (35). Du Bois's near contemporary, Max Weber, recognized the merit of Du Bois's work, which influenced Weber to abandon biological conceptions of race.

Second, Morris demonstrates Du Bois's significance as the leader of a sociological school at Atlanta University, where Du Bois taught from 1897 to 1910. Rather than focussing solely on Du Bois's accomplishments as a scholar, Morris draws new attention to his significance as a mentor and institution builder. In Atlanta, African American sociologists such as Monroe Work, Richard Wright Sr., and Richard Wright Jr. joined Du Bois to gather groundbreaking data on African American urban life. They demonstrated how social and economic factors explained racial inequality. Du Bois annually hosted leading social scientists across the nation at the famous Atlanta University conferences. The accomplishments of the Atlanta school are remarkable given its lack of financial resources when compared with elite white institutions such as the University of Chicago, typically credited with having developed the first sociological “school.” Morris shows how Atlanta sociologists effectively relied instead on “liberation capital”: volunteer and nominally paid research “provided by a self-conscious group of professionals and amateur intellectual workers for a subaltern school of thought that seeks to challenge the intellectual foundations of oppression” (188).

Third, Morris recounts how white social scientists systematically denied Du Bois credit for his accomplishments. By so doing, Morris offers a powerful reminder of how racism shaped American academic life. In particular, Morris argues that Booker T. Washington and his one-time public-relations agent Robert Park formed a “conservative alliance” to block the influence of Du Bois's radical challenge to the American racial order. Park was later hired by the University of Chicago and earned praise for establishing the discipline of sociology – credit denied Du Bois.

Morris's book reflects a growing serious engagement by sociologists with the history of their field. Unquestionably, Morris's recovery of Du Bois as one of its early leaders will help American sociologists overcome the institutional racism that shaped their discipline. However, Morris's championing of Du Bois occasionally leads him astray. He overlooks or explains away contradictions in Du Bois's thought and characterizes his ideas with anachronistic labels such as “social constructionist.” Similarly, his casting of Robert Park as villain slights Park's contributions and exaggerates the element of biological racism in Park's work. Morris also overemphasizes Du Bois as a sociologist. Du Bois was, among other things, a historian, philosopher, cultural critic, and political activist. Few will be persuaded that Du Bois's best-known work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), should primarily be read as a new method of writing sociology or that his political activism is best described as an example of “public sociology.”

Morris focusses on what Du Bois offered sociology. But the key question is really what sociology offered Du Bois. In 1895, Du Bois wrote, “I returned [from Germany] ready and eager to begin a life-work, leading to the emancipation of the American Negro. History and the other social sciences were to be my weapons, to be sharpened and applied by research and writing.”Footnote ¹

No one should deny the significance of Morris's achievement or its relevance for historians as well as sociologists. As for Du Bois, had he not been restricted by racism, he might have attained the status accorded Park: founder of American sociology. In truth, though, Du Bois was so much more than that. One wonders, as Du Bois himself did, whether marginality in fact produces deeper insight into one's society than does acceptance. Du Bois's accomplishments were so extensive that it is difficult to imagine how they were the work of a single individual. Some future historian might conclude that there must have been two or more Du Boises.