Ira De Augustine Reid (July 2, 1901 – August 15, 1968)[1] was an American sociologist and educator, who wrote extensively on the lives of Black immigrants and communities in the United States.
Reid attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was recruited directly by President John Hope, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1922.
[2] While attended for his masters degree at the University of Pittsburgh, Reid met and wed Gladys Russell Scott, with whom he adopted a child.
[1] From 1924 to 1928, Reid worked for the New York branch of the National Urban League, where he began as an apprentice and then fellow, before serving as an industrial secretary alongside Charles S. Johnson.
[6] The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division maintains a collection of Reid's unpublished writings and correspondence.
[2] Reid produced extensive scholarship on a variety of subjects, but is particularly renowned for his work with West Indian immigrants, as well as on youth and the sociology of education.
[4] After the 1954 Supreme Court Decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Reid edited a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March 1956), themed "Racial Desegregation and Integration.