Ulysses Grant Weatherly
July 2, 1865 – July 18, 1940
Ulysses Weatherly, the thirteenth president of the American Sociological Society (now Association), was born in the small Quaker town of West Newton (later incorporated into the city of Indianapolis), Indiana. The Weatherly family was white, male-headed, Protestant, and of humble origins. The father, William Addison Weatherly, was an illiterate farmer and not particularly interested in his eleven children’s educations. The mother, Lydia Dix, however, despite her lack of education, encouraged Ulysses, and her family helped with his schooling. Weatherly prepared for college at Pillsbury Academy and graduated from Colgate University in 1890, winning several prizes for his achievements in Latin and history. In 1891, Weatherly began graduate work in history and political science at Cornell University where he served as a literary assistant for the distinguished institutional historian, Andrew White. Weatherly spent the 1893–1894 academic year in Europe, traveling in England, Germany, and Austria, and studying at Heidelberg and Leipzig. When he returned to the United States, Cornell awarded him the doctorate in history.
After teaching in a high school and at Philadelphia Central College, Weatherly was appointed assistant professor in the department of history at Indiana University. In 1899, he changed to the department of economics and social science which he directed for thirty-six years. Concentrating his interests in sociology and social work, he received national attention and became president of the American Sociological Society in 1923. His presidential address was entitled “Racial Pessimism.” At his death in 1940, Weatherly’s bibliography consisted of more than eighty titles, many of which center on race—a subject on which he was considered one of the leading authorities of his day.
In the first three decades of the twentieth century, Weatherly held many ideas shared by fellow sociologists, as well as some differing with them. Most Southern sociologists (both amateurs and professionals) were considered the leading experts on the “Negro problem.” The Southerners embraced ideas about the purported inherent black mental, moral, and cultural inferiority, thereby rationalizing a caste-like social order. On the other hand, most Northern, professional sociologists thought blacks were slightly inferior yet capable of improvement, and that society was evolving toward higher forms of cooperation and cohesion. Most obvious in Weatherly’s works published between 1909 and 1927, and in his presidential address, is his vacillation between racial determinism and cultural determinism. On the issue of racial differences, he wrote:
That racial differences are fairly real is well established despite the frenzied denials of emotional champions of racial equality. [Then, he conceded:]until the ethnic explanation of intellectual levels is more thoroughly demonstrated it is safe as William I. Thomas suggests, to take the individual rather than race as the real variable. (Weatherly 1926:127).
Although Weatherly believed that blacks were approximately equal to whites in intellectual abilities, he did not think that intermarriage was the solution to the “Negro problem,” because the purported black “racial temperament”—a concept utilized by both Robert E. Park and William I. Thomas—and the white “ethnic instinct” militated against miscegenation. Consequently, Weatherly labeled himself in 1923 as a “chastened racialist” (Weatherly 1923:12), although it is obvious, he knew the “Negro problem” was changing.
The migration [of Negroes] to the Northern cities is destined to have two important consequences. It will augment the Southern negro’s unrest under the social restraints that are imposed upon him, and will, by opening an easy road of escape, render him less willing to submit to such restraints. It will also, in certain sections of the North where negroes congregate in numbers, lead to a dislike for the race that is likely to result, as it has already resulted in some cases, in outbreaks of positive hostility. Weatherly 1908:824).
In 1926, US President Calvin Coolidge, appointed Weatherly as an unofficial investigator of conditions in Haiti, which had been occupied by the US military since 1915. Weatherly concluded: “The ideals upon which Hampton [Institute] and Tuskegee [Institute] have worked are those which seemed to be peculiarly adapted and needed by the West Indian populations” (Weatherly 1923: 296). After many decades of acclaimed teaching, Weatherly retired in 1935 and moved with his wife to her hometown in upstate New York where he died at the age of seventy-five.
Biography by Vernon J. Williams Jr., Indiana University
Selected Works by Ulysses G. Weatherly
1908. “Is Race Friction Between Blacks and Whites in the United States Growing Inevitable?” American Journal of Sociology. Discussion of the Paper of Alfred H. Stone 13(6): 823-825.
1910. “Race and Marriage.” American Journal of Sociology 15(4): 433-53.
1911. “A World-Wide Color Line.” Popular Science Monthly 79: 474-485.
1911. “The First Universal Races Congress.” American Journal of Sociology 17(3): 315-328.
1923. The West Indies as a sociological laboratory.” American Journal of Sociology 29(3): 290-304.
1923. “Racial Pessimism.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society XVIII (December): 1-17.
1926. Social Progress: Studies in the Dynamics of Social Change. Philadelphia: Lippincott Co.
Works about Ulysses G. Weatherly
Odum, Howard W. 1951. American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States through 1950. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.
Williams, Vernon J. Jr. 2006. The Social Sciences and Theories of Race. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Obituary
Written by Edwin H. Sutherland, published in the American Sociological Review, 6(2):275.
Ulysses Grant Weatherly, whose death occurred in Cortland, New York, on July I8, I940, was a contemporary of Small, Blackmar, Giddings, Ross, Cooley, and Thomas, although he did not get into the teaching of sociology until a few years after they did. He was born in West Newton, Indiana, April 2, 1865, and practically all of his professional career was pursued in Indiana. He received an A.B. degree from Colgate University in 1890 and, after some study in Heidelberg and Leipzig, received a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 1894. He taught for one year in Central High School, Philadelphia, and was then appointed assistant professor of history in Indiana University in 1895. He continued in that position, with promotion to the rank of associate professor, until 1899, when he was made head of the department of Economics and Social Science in Indiana University. In preparation for this work he spent a part of the year in study at Columbia University. He had been preceded from 1888 to 1899 by teachers of sociology in Indiana University all of whom became recognized as important sociologists or economists: Jeremiah W. Jenks, E. A. Ross, John R. Commons, Frank A. Fetter, and E. L. Bogart. In his early years, Weatherly taught courses in General Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology, Charities, and Race Relations. During those years, he formed contacts with the social agencies of Indiana and took an active part in the state conferences of social work. During several summers, he taught in the universities of Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Cornell, and Columbia. He remained head of the department of Economics and Sociology until 1935, when he retired to Cortland, New York. There he spent much time reading in the library of Cornell University which was located not far away.
Weatherly was a charter member of the American Sociological Society when it was organized in 1905; he was a member of the executive committee from 1907 to 1910, vice-president from 1920 to 1923, and president in 1923-24. He was the author of Social Progress (Lippincott, 1926) and of many journal articles. He spent several months one year touring the West Indies with Robert E. Park, studying race relations, and wrote two journal articles on race relations in Hayti. He was kept occupied in teaching undergraduate students and made a significant success of this, for he was regarded by his students as a very stimulating and enlightening teacher.
