This book focuses on the lives of five unique, nationally known sociologists who are among the first African American women to receive doctorate degrees in this discipline. The histories of Jacquelyne Johnson Jackson, LaFrancis Rodgers-Rose, Joyce A. Ladner, Doris Wilkinson, and Delores P. Aldridge are accompanied by personal sociologies and detailed descriptions of unique areas of research they have used for social change. In each case, the reader will be able to see the intellectual and academic evolution of the sociologists as they built careers in their discipline. Further, the reader will be able to understand how these sociologists extended the very definition of the sociological enterprise by their movements between academic sociology and non-academic organizations, various social movements, and non-academic employment. Interviews with and analyses of the sociologists' published research are featured alongside their biographical information.
