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AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN possess a rich tradition of struggle and a unique standpoint on themselves, families, communities, and race relations (Collins 1990; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998). Although the lives and works of black2 women have been honored and remembered repeatedly over the last century (e.g., Majors 1893), this literature tends to be unknown and unrecognized in white, mainstream scholarship in sociology (Ladner 1973). Starting in the 1970s (e.g., Aptheker 1977), black women's scholarship has grown to such an extent that a considerable literature now exists and is widely distributed through books, articles, and journals (see Black Women in America 1993). This flood of knowledge, however, remains a relative trickle within sociology. Here I document the lives of eight African American women who were "founding sisters" (Deegan 1991) during the classical era of sociology, from 1890 to 1920, when it first emerged as a distinct discipline within the academy and wider society. In this paper, I locate the history of African American women in sociology relative to white men, white women, and African American men. I then introduce the ideas and praxis of eight, black, founding sisters.
THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY FROM GENDERED AND RACIAL STANDPOINTS
The White Malestream
Sociology has been conceptualized as the enterprise of white men in the United States and Europe. From 1890 to 1920, they quickly gained control over the academy and then defined such control as essential to doing sociology. Simultaneously, they dominated the granting of credentials within higher education and the generation of professional organizations, literature, and networks. In the United States, a hegemonic pattern emerged through the institutionalization of sociology at the University of Chicago, supported by its students who established academic departments throughout this country and others throughout the world, especially in Japan, China, Central America, and Latin America (Faris 1967; Kurtz 1984).
Sociology has, nonetheless, always been broader than these restricted boundaries. Sociologists on the margin, in this case African Americans and white women, have always been aware of both studying a problem and embodying that problem - a paraphrase of W.E.B . DuBois' (1903: 1-2) insightful socioautobiographical style of thought. As he pithily explained: "being a problem is a strange experience" (1903: 2). This experience was deepened by racism within the profession, in what...