The Science of Integration

CHILDREN, RACE, AND POWER: KENNETH AND
MAMIE CLARK’S NORTHSIDE CENTER, by Gerald
Markowitz and David Rosner. University Press of
Virginia, 1996. 304 pp. $29.95.

A century ago this year, W.E.B. Du Bois took charge of a new series of annual conferences at Atlanta University on the state of Black America. Having just completed The Philadelphia Negro, a pioneering sociological survey of Philadelphia’s largely black seventh ward, Du Bois mapped out an ongoing program of scientific studies of various aspects of black life throughout the nation. His long-range plan was for the studies to be repeated in ten-year cycles for the next hundred years, expanding in scope each decade. “The Negro probl...