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Abstract
This article reviews one of the earliest crime polls conducted in America. As a part of W.E.B. Du Bois's research program at Atlanta University, he conducted a little known crime poll in 1904. He surveyed public officials and private citizens regarding their views on crime in the African-American community. His poll showed that, while African-Americans and whites generally agreed that crime in the African-American community was on the decline, there was little agreement regarding the fairness of the criminal justice system towards African-Americans. After comparing Du Bois's survey to that of a recent crime poll, it is revealed that, not only was his survey pioneering in its approach, but it was also prophetic in its findings.
I wish to state...that the most important sociological scholar anywhere in the Southern States in America, with whom no scholar can compare, is a Negro-Burckhardt (sic) Du Bois.
Max Weber 19 10 (as quoted in Lyman 1992)
Introduction
Since his death in the summer of 1963, the scholarship and contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, noted African American intellectual and activist, have been reconsidered by several academic disciplines. One discipline that has also recently begun to reexamine his contributions is American criminology (Young and Taylor Greene, 1995; Gabbidon, 1996,1998). With this reexamination has come the realization that Du Bois pioneered not only theoretical approaches in the discipline (Taylor Greene and Gabbidon, 2000; Gabbidon, 1999a), but also, from 1897 to 1913, the development of one of the first schools of social scientific research in the United States, at Atlanta University (Gabbidon, 1999b). As a part of his research program in Atlanta, Du Bois annually investigated various aspects of African American life (Du Bois, 1903). And since crime in the African American community was a central concern in his era, much as it remains today, he devoted an appreciable amount of time to its study (for examples, see Du Bois, 1899a, 1899b,1901). During the 19031904 academic year, he devoted his annual research to an investigation of crime in Georgia. The resulting publication, Some Notes on Negro Crime, Particularly in Georgia (1904), of which he was editor and primary contributor, included one of the first crime polls conducted in America. Our aim in this essay is threefold. First, to provide...