This dissertation examines how progressive era social scientists thought about African American workers and their place in the nation’s industrial past, present, and future.Progressives across the color line drew on a common discourse of industrial evolution that linked racial development with labor fitness. Evolutionary science merged with scientific management to create new taxonomies of racial labor fitness. I chart this process from turn of the century actuarial science which defined African Americans as a dying race, to wartime mental and physical testing that acknowledged the Negro as a vital -albeit inferior- part of the nation’s industrial workforce. During this period, African Americans struggled to prove their worth on the shop-floor, the battlefield, and the academy. This thesis contends that the modern Negro type- African Americans as objects of social scientific inquiry- which came of age in the post-World War Two era, was born in the draft boards, factories, trenches, hospitals, and university classrooms of the Progressive Era.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/29785 |
| Date | 31 August 2011 |
| Creators | Lawrie, Paul |
| Contributors | Bender, Daniel, Halpern, Rick |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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