Early in the twentieth century disciplinary borders in the social sciences were considerably more porous than by mid-century. Sociology, while already a distinct department at Chicago on a par with the department of political economy, either shared a broader social scientific condominium with economics and other disciplines as in the Faculty of Political Science at Columbia or it was a subordinate field within an economics department, e.g. at Harvard. This is the main reason for residual ambiguity in the attribution of a disciplinary identity to some of the scholars who earned their doctorates back in that day.
Today’s addition to the series “Meet an economics Ph.D. alumnus/a” is precisely such a case. The African American George Edmund Haynes (Columbia Ph.D., 1912) was the first African American to be awarded a doctorate by Columbia University and like the first African American to be awarded a Ph.D. at Harvard, W.E.B. Du Bois (1895), taught both economics and sociology during his early academic career. Where Du Bois brought an historian’s lens to his work, Haynes brought that of a social worker to his, having studied at the New York School of Philanthropy following his M.A. from Yale.
In the current discussion of structural racism in U.S. society in general and in academic economics in particular, the careers of Du Bois and Haynes suggest that “The Negro Problem” had been outsourced from academic economics in a way that “The Labor Problem” never was. African American men and women interested in the economics of race found homes in schools of social work and separate departments of sociology (or in traditional Black colleges). Analogously those women interested in the economics of families and consumption more often were expected to enter departments of home economics.
This post provides three brief internet biographies about George Edmund Haynes in which I have linked wherever possible to his writings available on the internet. Details of Haynes’ academic whereabouts were confirmed from official publications of Fisk University and Columbia University and appended to the post.
The next post provides the social science curriculum developed by Haynes at Fisk University shortly after he was awarded his doctorate from Columbia.
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Fun Fact: Jared Bernstein received his Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the Columbia University School of Social Work, the ultimate successor to the New York School of Philanthropy (that in 1917 had morphed into the New York School of Social Work). Jared Bernstein served as Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden so perhaps we find ourselves on the cusp of an inclusionary revolution in economics.
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Research Tip
“Memoirs” ca. 1950 unpublished autobiography “in the possession of his widow” cited p. 482 in Guichard Parris and Lester Brooks Blacks in the City: A History of the National Urban League. Little, Brown, 1971.
Where are the memoirs now?
Tip of the hat to: Francille Rusan Wilson for her book, The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), pp. 61-66 on George Edmund Haynes’ early academic years.
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From the Preface to Haynes’ dissertation:
“This study was begun as one of the several researches of the Bureau of Social Research of the New York School of Philanthropy, largely at the suggestion of Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay, the director, to whose interest, advice and sympathy its completion is largely due…
…The material was gathered between January, 1909, and January, 1910, except about four weeks in August, 1909, during the time that I was pursuing studies at the School of Philanthropy and at Columbia University…
…I wish to acknowledge especially the help of Dr. William L. Bulkley in making possible many of the interviews with wage-earners, or Dr. Roswell C. McCrea for criticism and encouragement in preparation of the monograph, and of Dr. E.E. Pratt, sometime fellow of the Bureau of Social Research; Miss Dora Sandowsky for her careful and painstaking tabulation of most of the figures.”
Source: The Negro at Work in New York City—A Study in Economic Progress published in the series Studies in History, Economic and Public Law, Vol. 29, No. 3 (1912),p. 7.
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Dr. George Edmund Haynes (1880 – January 8, 1960)
Social Worker, Reformer, Educator and Co-Founder of the National Urban League.
NOTE: … Much of the entry was excerpted from the booklet “The National Urban League: 100 years of Empowering Communities” authored by Anne Nixon and produced by The Human Spirit Initiative, an organization with a mission to inspire people to desire to make a difference and then act on it….
Introduction: The National Urban League was established in 1910 through the efforts of George Edmund Haynes and Ruth Standish Baldwin, the Urban League is the nation’s oldest and largest community- based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. Today, the National Urban League, headquartered in New York City, spearheads the non-partisan efforts of its local affiliates. There are over 100 local affiliates of the National Urban League located in 35 states and the District of Columbia providing direct services to more than 2 million people nationwide through programs, advocacy and research. The mission of the Urban League movement is to enable African Americans to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights. (Source: www.nul.org, July 2006)
Background: The National Urban League was founded in 1910. The Civil War between North and South had ended forty-five years before, but the country was still deeply divided, and most former slaves remained locked in a system of political powerlessness and economic inequality. The new organization set two major goals – remove barriers to racial equality and achieve economic empowerment for the country’s Negro citizens.
Slavery had been abolished in 1865 by the 13th amendment to the United States Constitution. The 14th and 15th amendments went further and guaranteed equal treatment to Negroes and gave Negro men the right to vote. Despite these Constitutional protections, the civil war continued to rage in the hearts and minds of white Southerners. They were resigned to the abolition of slavery but were not willing to accept either social change or political domination by former slaves.
[…]
The alternatives for former slaves were limited. They could work for white farmers as tenants or sharecroppers, barely a step above slavery, or they could leave the South. Many opted to migrate and moved north to find a better life. Two people stepped forward at this time to provide leadership and help build an organization dedicated to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream – one Negro, one white; one man, one woman – and together, they founded the National Urban League.
Their names were George Edmund Haynes and Ruth Standish Baldwin. Mrs. Baldwin came from a family of early New England colonists with a history of social activism. Her father was the editor of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican. A graduate of Smith College, she was the wife of William Henry Baldwin, Jr., president of the Long Island Railroad. She was active in the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (NLPCW) – an organization formed to help protect Negro women new to Northern cities.
George Edmund Haynes, unlike Ruth Standish Baldwin, did not come from a background of privilege. His father was a laborer, and his mother was a domestic servant with great ambitions for her son. When George Haynes completed his elementary education, the family moved from his birthplace in Pine Bluff, Arkansas to the more cosmopolitan community of Hot Springs. At a point in history when educational opportunities for Negroes ranged from limited to nonexistent, George Haynes’ achievements were astonishing. In Hot Springs, he completed the limited educational opportunities available and went on to take high school level courses and college preparatory studies at the Agricultural and Mechanical University in Huntsville, Alabama. He received his bachelor’s degree from Nashville, Tennessee’s Fisk University and then a master’s degree from Yale. Because he was an outstanding student, Yale awarded him an academic scholarship, and he waited tables and stoked furnaces for his room and board.
His varied and distinguished career began immediately after the Yale years. His first job was with the Colored Men’s Department of the International YMCA, where his visits to Negro colleges and universities broadened his horizons. But his academic studies continued, and he added to his reputation as a brilliant scholar. While studying at the University of Chicago during the summers of 1906 and 1907, Dr. Haynes became interested in social problems affecting black migrants from the South. This interest led him to the New York School of Philanthropy, from which he graduated in 1910. Two years later he received a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Columbia University Press published his doctoral dissertation, The Negro at Work in New York City [— A Study in Economic Progress]. He had the distinction of being the first Negro to receive a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University.
Within this period, he also involved himself in the activities of the American Association for the Protection of Colored Women, the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York, and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes. Dr. Haynes was a man of many talents with an extraordinary number of professional commitments. In addition to being a co-founder of the National Urban League, he also founded and directed the Department of Social Sciences at Fisk University. At Fisk, his students trained at the Bethlehem Training Center that he had established as part of the Social Science Department. As part of their training, they did field work in existing agencies, and many were assigned to local affiliates of the National Urban League (i.e., Philadelphia, St. Louis, Nashville, Baltimore, Memphis, and Louisville). This model program was repeated at the University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, and New York University.
Dr. Haynes served as executive director of the National Urban League from 1910 to 1918. He also established the Association of Negro Colleges and Secondary Schools, and served that organization as secretary from 1910 to 1918. He helped the New York School of Philanthropy and NLUCAN in collaborative planning that led to the establishment of the first social work training center for black graduate students at Fisk, and he directed that center from 1910-1918.
From 1918 to 1921, he served as Director of Negro Economics in the United States Department of Labor. As a special assistant to the Secretary of Labor, he was involved in matters of racial conflict in employment, housing, and recreation. He continued his earlier studies of exclusion of black workers from certain trade unions, interracial conditions in the workplace, and child labor. These studies resulted in numerous scholarly works. One of the most significant of these was The Negro at Work During the World War and During Reconstruction. The work’s widespread and profound impact resulted in his appointment as a member of the President’s Unemployment Conference in 1921.
In 1930 Dr. Haynes conducted a survey of the work of the YMCA in South Africa, and in 1947 he managed a similar study of the organization’s activities in other African nations. These efforts resulted in his being chosen as consultant on Africa by the World Committee of YMCAs. His book, Trend of the Races (1922), reflected his belief in the union of all people.
For the last nine years of his life, Dr. Haynes taught at the City College of New York and served as an officer of the American Committee on Africa. Dr. Haynes died in New York City in 1960.
Dr. George Edmund Haynes and Ruth Standish Baldwin have been memorialized with a plaque in the The Extra Mile — Points of Light Volunteer Pathway located on the sidewalks of downtown Washington, D.C. The Extra Mile Pathway is a program of Points of Light Institute, dedicated to inspire, mobilize and equip individuals to volunteer and serve. The Extra Mile was approved by Congress and the District of Columbia. It is funded entirely by private sources.
In 1917, Dr. Haynes made a presentation at the National Conference on Social Welfare on the migration of Negroes to northern cities. It can be viewed on the ERAS section under Civil Rights or linked directly: The Migration Of Negroes Into Northern Cities: By George E. Haynes, Ph. D., Executive Secretary of the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes
For further reading:
Carlton-La Ney, Iris (1983) “Notes on a Forgotten Black Social Worker and Sociologist: George Edmund Haynes,” The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 10 : Iss. 3 , Article 14.
Interracial Conference of Church Women, Eagles Mere, Pa., September 21-22, 1926, Social Welfare History Portal.
Source: Nixon, A. (n.d.). Julia Clifford Lathrop (1858-1932): Dr. George Edmund Haynes (1880 – January 8, 1960) – Social worker, reformer, educator and co-founder of the National Urban League. Social Welfare History Project. Retrieved July 31, 2020 from http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/social-work/haynes-george-edmund/
Archived copy at the Internet Archive WaybackMachine.
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George Edmund Haynes
by Reavis L. Mitchell, Jr.
Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, George E. Haynes was the only child of Louis and Mattie Sloan Haynes. At a young age he moved with his parents to New York, where he spent his youth. In 1903 he received his B.A. from Fisk University, he earned his M.A. from Yale University in 1904, and in 1912 he became the first African American awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University.
In 1910 George Haynes married Elizabeth Ross of Montgomery, Alabama; they became the parents of one child, George Edmund Haynes Jr. After their marriage, the couple resided in New York, where Haynes studied social science and economics. He developed an acute awareness of the impact of socioeconomic readjustment upon African Americans who migrated northward from the South. Shortly after his marriage in 1910, he joined with Frances Kellor and Ruth Baldwin to establish the National Urban League for assisting those making the transition from agrarian to urban living.
Haynes accepted a faculty position at Fisk University in 1912. His intense interest in America’s changing social fabric prompted his leadership in establishing Fisk’s department of social sciences and an academic program to train professional social workers. By 1914 he had developed the first college-level course on the history of African Americans. His research on the African American adjustment to a predominately white society earned Haynes acclaim as a leader in the study of racial affairs.
Haynes emerged as a leader in efforts to bring Nashville’s white and African American communities together. Bethlehem House, a settlement house first proposed in 1907 by Fisk graduate Sallie Hill Sawyer and enlarged in 1913 by the addition of a kindergarten and clinic, became the “hands-on” training center for Professor Haynes’s social science students. The settlement house concept, patterned after the British movement of the 1880s, began to gather momentum in America in the early 1900s. By 1915 the Bethlehem Settlement House was the product of very advanced social theory put into action–especially in the turn-of-the-century South. Fisk University’s involvement with Bethlehem House supported the reality of whites and African Americans working together to provide social services.
In 1916, when a fire devastated East Nashville, the African American community suffered extensively. In the charred aftermath of this horrendous fire, Haynes’s Fisk University students offered assistance to the fire victims as they struggled to cope with their losses.
Two years later, Haynes left Tennessee for Washington, where he was appointed special assistant to the U.S. secretary of labor, serving until 1921, when he became cofounder and first executive secretary of the Department of Race Relations of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. For the next twenty-six years, he remained with the council in New York City and became a visionary leader of the city’s African American community. In the late 1940s, for example, Haynes organized the Interracial Clinic, which promoted interracial understanding and easing of racial tensions. In 1955 he was appointed to the New York University Board of Trustees, becoming the first African American appointed to a major American university’s board. After his wife’s death in 1953, Haynes remarried in 1955 to Olyve Jeter of Mount Vernon, New York, where the couple made their home. Haynes died in 1960 at Mount Vernon.
Suggested Reading
Reavis L. Mitchell Jr., Fisk University Since 1866: The Loyal Children Make Their Way (1995).
Source: The Tennessee Historical Society, Tennessee Encyclopedia website. “George Edmund Haynes” by Reavis L. Mitchell, Jr.
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George Edmund Haynes (1880-1960)
by Jessica Salo
Author, educator and organizer George Edmund Haynes was a social scientist, religious leader and pioneer in social work education for African Americans. Born in 1880 to Louis and Mattie Haynes in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, George Haynes was the oldest of two children of a domestic worker mother and day laborer father. He was educated in the segregated and unequal school system of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Eventually his family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas to pursue greater educational opportunities for the Haynes children.
In 1893 at the age of thirteen, Haynes attended the Chicago World’s Fair where for the first time he witnessed discussions about the problems affecting African Americans. It was here he first heard about the “Negro Problem” and a variety of possible solutions including emigration to Africa.
Haynes’s experience at the World’s Fair motivated him to pursue higher education. With the support of his mother he enrolled at the Agriculture and Mechanical College for Negroes at Normal, Alabama. After a year he transferred to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he eventually earned his B.A. degree in 1903. Haynes was admitted to Yale Graduate School where he earned his M.A. in 1904.
Haynes in 1905 began his career at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) working with African American youth in the Association’s Colored Men’s Department. In 1905 and 1906, with the support of the YMCA, he toured the South and visited almost all of the African American colleges to assess black higher education. During this time Haynes met and married Elizabeth Ross who was engaged in similar work with African American women.
While working at the YMCA, he enrolled at the University of Chicago during the summers of 1906 and 1907. He then moved to New York and attended the New York School of Philanthropy (later called the New York School of Social Work of Columbia University) and was its first African American graduate in 1910. Two years later he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia.
George Haynes, upon graduation found himself in New York at the beginning of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the urban North, and in particular, New York City. The migration became an important issue for social scientists. Haynes, the activist, became involved with various organizations that hoped to ease the transition of the Southern newcomers to the city. The organizations included the Association for the Protection of Colored Women, the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions of the Negroes of New York, and the Committee on Urban Conditions among Negroes. In 1910 Haynes and white reformer, Ruth Standish Baldwin, brought these three organizations together into the National League on Urban Conditions or the National Urban League (NUL). Haynes became the first Executive Secretary of the NUL, a post he held between 1910 and 1917.
Haynes, used his work with black migrants as the basis for his 1912 Columbia University dissertation, “The Negro at Work in New York” which was later published by Columbia University Press under the same title.
After completing his dissertation Haynes was hired by Fisk University. Between 1913 and 1917, he split his time between New York and Nashville, working directly on black community issues related to the Great Migration while teaching the next generation of social scientists who would succeed him.
In 1918, Haynes went to Washington, D.C. where he became a special assistant (with the title Director of Negro Economics) to the Secretary of Labor, a post he held until 1921. While at the Department of Labor, Haynes conducted surveys and provided analysis and recommendations to the U.S. government on the most effective way to utilize the new Northern black industrial workers. Much of his federally-sponsored research was published in 1921 as The Negro at Work During the World War and During Reconstruction. Haynes and Emmett Scott who worked in a similar capacity in the War Department during this period, were the highest ranking black federal employees and the first to have influence at the Cabinet level.
In 1921 Haynes became the first Executive Secretary of the Department of Race Relations for the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Here he applied his study and analysis to the question of race and religion in Ameican society for the Council until his retirement in 1947. In 1930 Haynes conducted surveys for the YMCA of South Africa and in the 1940s did much the same for other African nations. His Africa work brought international prominence to his research.
Even after retirement in 1947, Haynes remained involved in race relations work while teaching courses at the City College of the City University of New York including one of the first courses on African American history presented in a predominately white institution. In 1948 Haynes was appointed to the first Board of Trustees of the new State University of New York (SUNY) system. He also published one book, Africa, the Continent of the Future in 1950.
George Edmund Haynes died in New York City in 1960. Many of his manuscript and papers are preserved in the George Edmund Haynes Collection at Yale University and at the Erastus Milo Cravath Library at Fisk University.
Source: Jessica Salo, “George Edmund Haynes (1880-1960)” article at the Website: BlackPast.
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Other publications
by George Edmund Haynes
“Co-operation with Colleges in Securing and Training Negro Social Workers for Urban Conditions,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections 38: 384-387.
Negro New-Comers in Detroit, Michigan: A Challenge to Christian Statesmanship, A Preliminary Survey. New York: Home Missions Council, 1918.
“Negro Migration—its Effects on Family and Community Life in the North,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work 51: 62-75.
Cotton Growing Communities (with Benson Y. Landis), 1934.
Africa, Continent of the Future. New York (The Association Press) and Geneva (World’s Committee of Young Men’s Christian Associations), 1951.
“The Birth and Childhood of the National Urban League,” The National Urban League 50th Anniversary Year Book (1960), 1-12.
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Ph.D. Columbia University, 1912
George Edmund Haynes
A.B. Fisk 1903, A.M. Yale 1904
Dissertation: The negro at work in New York City
Source: Columbia University, One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Annual Commencement (June 5, 1912), p. 40.
George Edmund Haynes,
Ph.D., 12; A.B., 03, Fisk Univ.; A.M., 04, Yale; Prof. Social Science Fisk Univ.; Ex-Sec. Natl. League on Urban Conditions among Negroes; mem. Am. Acad. Pol. And Social Sci.; Am. Economics Assn.; Am. Social and Natl. Geographic Socs. Fisk University and 1611 Harding St., Nashville, Tenn.
Source: Catalogue of Officers and Graduates of Columbia University (XVI edition). New York, 1916, p. 1065.
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From Fisk University Catalogues
College Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; A.M., Student. Graduate School, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Source: Catalogue of the Officers, Students and Alumni of Fisk University, 1904-1905, p. 79.
College Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; A.M., Assistant Secretary, College Y.M.C.A., Atlanta, Ga.
Source: Catalogue of the Officers, Students and Alumni of Fisk University, 1905-1906, p. 79.
Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; A.M., Yale University, 1904; Secretary International Committee, College Y.M.C.A., Atlanta, Ga.
Source: Catalogue of the Officers, Students and Alumni of Fisk University, 1906-1907, p.85.
Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; A.M., Yale University, 1904; Secretary International Committee, College Y.M.C.A., Atlanta, Ga.
Source: Catalogue of the Officers, Students and Alumni of Fisk University, 1907-1908, p. 86.
College Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; A.M., Yale University, 1904; Junior Fellow, Bureau of Social Research, The New York School of Philanthropy; Graduate Student Columbia University; 219 West 134th Street, New York City.
Source: Catalogue of the Officers, Students and Alumni of Fisk University, 1908-1909, p.95.
College Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; A.M., Yale University, 1904; Junior Fellow, Bureau of Social Research, The New York School of Philanthropy; Graduate Student Columbia University; 219 West One-Hundred and Thirty-fourth Street, New York City.
Source: Catalogue of the Officers, Students and Alumni of Fisk University, 1909-1910, p. 71.
Faculty and Officers
George Edmund Haynes, M.A.
Associate Professor of Social Science
Source: Catalogue Number 1910-1911, Fisk University News, Vol. II, No. 2 (March, 1911), p. 5.
Events on the Campus
October 28.—Lecture on “What Sociology is About,” by Prof. G. E. Haynes.
Source: Catalogue Number 1910-1911, Fisk University News, Vol. II, No. 2 (March, 1911), p. 15.
Class Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; M.A., Yale University, 1904; Graduate, The New York School of Philanthropy, 1910; Associate Professor Sociology [sic], Fisk University, 1033 Twelfth Avenue, N., Nashville.
Source: Catalogue Number 1910-1911,Fisk University News, Vol. II, No. 2 (March, 1911), p. 89.
Faculty and Officers
George Edmund Haynes, M.A.
Professor of Social Science
Source: Catalogue Number 1911-1912 (2nd ed.), Fisk University News, Vol. III, No. 3 (May, 1912), p. 5.
College Alumni
Class 1903
George Edmund Haynes, B.A.; M.A., Yale University, 1904; Graduate, The New York School of Philanthropy, 1910; Professor Social Science, Fisk University; Director, National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, 1033 Twelfth Avenue, N., Nashville.
Source: Catalogue Number 1911-1912 (2nd ed.), Fisk University News, Vol. III, No. 3 (May, 1912), p. 96.
Faculty and Officers
George Edmund Haynes, M.A.
Professor of Social Science
Source: Catalogue Number 1912-1913, Fisk University News, Vol. IV, No. 3 (May, 1912), p. 5.
Image Source: U. S. National Archives. Rediscovering Black History website. Post by Gabrielle Hutchins “Dr. George Edmund Haynes: Social Crusader in Black Economics” (July 8, 2020).
