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Articles in this special issue discuss the utilization of social research by governmental commissions. How social science knowledge influences their decision making is examined. (RM)

The article focuses on sociologists W.E.B Du Bois and Robert Ezra Park. Topics discussed include racism in U.S., American sociology and history of sociology. Other topics which includes psychology, race relations and activism are also discussed. In addition, black consciousness and black culture are also discussed.

This paper discusses the role of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, a foundation set up by John D. Rockefeller Sr. in memory of his wife, which between 1923 and 1928, under its director Beardsley Ruml, distributed twenty million dollars for social science research The Memorial supported major programs of sociological research at the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina, as well as providing important assistance to individual sociologists (such as Elton Mayo) and to institutions at which sociology was taught (such as the London School of Economics) The Memorial during the 1920s laid the foundations of the pattern of large-scale sociological research in the contemporary American university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Chicago Commission on race relations. It probed the Chicago race riots of 27 July to 8 August, 1919, in which thirty eight people died and 537 were injured. Chicago race riots began when a Black was stoned by Whites on the twenty-ninth Street beach at the lake shore and was drowned. When the White police was called to the scene, they refused to write complaints against the stone-throwers. But they arrested one Black onlooker on the complaint of a White. Blacks at the scene attacked Whites, the police retaliated and the rioting began. Two initiatives for the formulation of a policy on race relations occurred during rioting. On 30 July, eleven leading citizens suggested to the Illinois governor a commission of five to eight members. Two days later, on 1 August a powerful appeal was issued to the governor by a meeting asking him to appoint an emergency state committee to study the psychological, social and economic causes underlying conditions resulting in the present race riots. The commission was unusual in having equal representatives of both races.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics including Puerto Rican immigrants to the U.S.'s racial identity, intragroup heterogeneity among Mexican Americans and U.S. women college students' attitudes on physical appearance.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics, including European ethnicity in the U.S., immigrants on Lampedusa Island, Italy and and border areas in in Southern Europe.