A Mind-Opening Influence of Great Importance: Arthur Raper at Agnes Scott College

To Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the inspiration of my student days to intellectual fortitude; To Dr. James Weldon Johnson, the inspiration of my student days to spiritual fortitude; And to Dr. Arthur F. Raper, my esteemed professor of sociology at Agnes Scott College, who introduced me to Dr. Du Bois and Dr. Johnson, I dedicate this book.2 That a graduate of a southern white women's college from this period would dedicate a book to two famous African American civil rights leaders was highly unusual, to put it mildly. [...] as a measure of the high regard in which he was held, the Class of 1938 dedicated the college yearbook to Raper, an unusual tribute to a part-time instructor, let alone an outspoken liberal.3 Raper's work as research secretary for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and as a founding member of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, his classic works on lynching and the plantation South, and his involvement with the New Deal have all been amply chronicled in the historical literature.