Книга: Charles A. Ellwood «Sociology And Modern Social Problems»

A tragic event in the 1920s (recounted by retired business executive, Bob Beasley, at the Centennial Symposium held by the Department of Sociology in September 2000) illustrates the kind of public controversy that has often affected MU sociology since the 1920s. In 1923 a young Black man was lynched in Columbia after being falsely accused of a sexual assault against a young white woman. He was hanged from a bridge over the main road running by the MU campus. In the aftermath of the event, according to Beasley's report, Charles Ellwood was a vocal, public critic of the lynching and of the local citizens for allowing such a thing to happen in Columbia. Ellwood became the target of Ku Klux Klan threats and much local indignation. In the same time period, Terry Pihlblad must have been writing his critique of the use of intelligence tests to determine racial and ethnic superiority. Also, Herbert Blumer, later to become a prominent sociologist at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley, completed an M.A. degree at MU in 1925 and stayed for a few years as a teacher. He became a target of public criticism around 1927 for suggesting in a guest lecture at Stephens College that there are no pure races, a point which Ellwood and Pihlblad had both argued in their writings.