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Abstract
The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory comprised the first American school of sociology. Despite this accomplishment, the contributions of Atlanta University sociologists and social scientists are, mostly, omitted from classical and contemporary discussions concerning early sociologists who contributed to the discipline during its formative years in America. The exclusion of this institution from canonical recognition is astonishing given that W.E.B. Du Bois was the chairperson of the sociology department from 1897-1910 and that Atlanta University housed the first systematic and scientific program of collective sociological research in the United States-the Atlanta University Conference on Negro Problems, 1896-1924. The objective of this investigation is to provide a historical account of the first American school of sociology-the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory.
Introduction
The discipline of sociology is replete with historical data citing theoretical formulations, methodological advancements, and other significant contributions by some of the founders, advocates, and innovators of the discipline. Men such as Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx are canonized classical sociologists that every student of the discipline is required to study because their scholarship, presumably, exemplifies sociological excellence. Now included within many discussions of influential, yet historically overlooked, sociologists and social scientists are women such as Harriet Martineau, Ida B. Wells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Jane Addams and the women of the Hull-House settlement (Cannon, 1997; Deegan, 1988; Macionis, 2001; Riedesel, 1981; Ritzer, 2000; Sheth and Prasch, 1996; and Terry; 1983). The ideas of these women and men represent a vast continuum upon which a variety of sociological concepts, theories, methodologies, and investigations have contributed to the relatively young discipline. Many of the individuals who participated in the construction of sociology through their theoretical and empirical research efforts did not do so in a vacuum. Institutions of higher learning were very instrumental in the development and maturation of sociology. Schools such as Kansas University, Columbia University, University of Nebraska, University of Michigan, and the University of Chicago are locations where many American social scientists received institutional support and guidance and were afforded the intellectual freedom to develop sociology into the area of study that it is today. These American institutions, through advancements in sociological theory and methodology, seemingly, replaced Europe as the central locations of innovative sociological developments during the late...