W. E. B. Du Bois and Rural Sociology

Among W. E. B. Du Bois’s many intellectual contributions were his studies of rural Black Americans and the social milieu in which they lived one generation removed from enslavement. These studies, conducted at the end of the nineteenth century and during early years of the twentieth, were groundbreaking theoretically and methodologically, beginning with detailed rural community studies that provided the basis for broader work on race and the class distinctions that quickly emerged among Black farmers and artisans. The focus here is on Du Bois’s work as a rural scholar and his connections with the emergence of rural sociology as a discipline over the first decades of the twentieth century through interactions rural sociologists had with Du Bois and other Black sociologists. Two central insights from Du Bois’s work have continuing relevance to rural sociologists: the centrality of race and the importance of a moral purpose guiding scholarly pursuits.