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3 migration and War after three years as a Phelps-stokes researcher, Woofter applied for graduate study at columbia University, where the sociologists and statisticians in the department of social science rivaled those at the University of chicago. He knew that Thomas Jesse Jones’s career as a social scientist began with a Phd from columbia , but his financial circumstances and the University of georgia’s lack of accreditation for admission to advanced work hampered him. Relying on personal connections and favors, he secured a one-year fellowship at the american University in Washington, d.c., with references supplied by Jones and U.s. commissioner of education Philander P. claxton, who sat on the university’s fellowships board. His $500 award for 1916–17 let him register for a probationary year in the graduate program at columbia as a “Fellow of the american University,” before enrolling properly as a Phd student with an intended dissertation on “negro Farm life in georgia.”1 Woofter’s work at columbia was supervised by the eminent sociologist Franklin H. giddings, who, like his colleagues in psychology, anthropology, and economics , favored rigorous statistical analysis and use of the Burroughs adding and listing machine. giddings believed social behavior and adaptation derived from the “evolution of a consciousness of kind” that individuals shared with members of their own group; he also held that most social conflicts and inequalities stemmed from innate differences between groups and that those tensions were logical expressions of collective identity and preference.2 “consciousness of kind,” he contended , led people to “manifest a dominant antipathy” toward “variations” from their type: “Fundamental identities or similarities of nature and purpose, of instinct and habit, of mental and moral qualities, of capacities and abilities, are recognized as factors in the struggle for existence. to the extent that safety and prosperity depend upon group cohesion and cooperation, they are seen to depend upon such conformity to type as may suffice to ensure the cohesion and to fulfill the cooperation.”3 The rationale that the new england–born giddings provided for degrees of segregation of american racial and ethnic groups struck Woofter as persuasive and reassuring. Woofter detached himself from many aspects of orthodox southern thought, including the ideal of total racial separation, but he remained wedded throughout his life to the conviction that the races should not mix at the most intimate levels and that harmony was best preserved by americans spending their social lives in homogenous company. giddings’s elaboration of “consciousness of kind” appeared to rest on scientific investigation and rea62 migration and War | 63 soning, rather than the prejudice and bitterness that made Woofter uncomfortable in the south. as giddings put it, “consciousness of kind” meant “that pleasurable state of mind which includes organic sympathy, the perception of resemblance, conscious or reflective sympathy, affection, and the desire for recognition.” Woofter could see that both black and white americans might derive satisfaction and comfort from a separateness maintained for positive reasons and not imposed out of antipathy and suspicion. according to historian george m. Fredrickson, giddings and the “pioneers of the new discipline of sociology” were reacting against unmodified social darwinist concepts of competition; instead, “the new sociologists posited a social order based on co-operation, compromise, and cohesion,” while stressing basic differences between the cooperating groups.4 The interracial cooperation movement drew heavily on this point of view. Woofter knew that giddings had supervised the doctoral work of both Thomas Jesse Jones and Howard W. odum. Jones, in particular, regarded giddings as his own great mentor and hailed Woofter fondly as another “disciple of giddings.”5 In January 1917, Woofter told claxton, “This year has been most profitable to me, and [I] am now practically assured that, with another year’s work I can pass my Ph.d. examinations and receive the degree.” He failed in his bid for another fellowship, but secured more money by reentering federal government service in June 1917 with a project that directly contributed to his doctoral dissertation and drew him even closer to the interracial cooperation movement. With the approval of the head of the Bureau of Immigration, anthony caminetti, and assistant secretary of labor louis F. Post, a spurious job title of “immigration inspector” allowed Woofter to be hired under the congressional appropriation for “expenses of Regulating Immigration, 1917.”6 His actual task was to study black migration in georgia from an office in macon as part of a regional project led by James Hardy dillard, entitled...

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