ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part shows Abram Lincoln Harris' penchant for the use of survey and other types of statistical data in the full spirit of empirical social science inquiry. His 1924 Current History article examines the scope and the causes of black migration from South to North in the United States from the 1870s to the early 1920s, making extensive use of census data. Harris moved in thirty years from a radical analysis of the limitations of the civil rights movement to an analysis that would be compatible with the thinking of a contemporary black neoconservative. Preparation for the world of work does not begin with formal school training. It begins informally in the home. Trying to understand these differences in human capital accumulation in terms of years of formal schooling between black and white is barely to scratch the surface of the problem.
