The Southern Sociological Society (SSS) was established in 1935 by a group of colleagues in Knoxville, Tennessee in an organizational meeting April 20–21.
This meeting emerged from an earlier gathering of Southern sociologists at the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association) in 1934 between Charles S. Johnson, E. T. Krueger, Wilson Gee, and probably Rupert Vance (who worked for Johnson).
Krueger, the program made by William E. Cole, and the constitution drafted by Rupert Vance with assistance from Wilson Gee.
Simpson credits Gee as the father for Gee “kept alive the idea for at least three years, and the mission of the Society expressed at Knoxville reflects his deep commitment to research on problems of the South”.
[1] During a time of Jim Crow segregation, the early founders of the Southern Sociological Society demanded a policy that all of its meetings be held in integrated hotels.