African American sociologist
Horace Roscoe Cayton Jr. (April 12, 1903 – January 21, 1970) was a prominent American sociologist, newspaper columnist, and writer who specialized in studies of working-class black Americans, particularly in mid-20th-century Chicago. Cayton is best remembered as the co-author of a seminal 1945 study of South Side, Chicago, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City.
Biography
Early years
Horace R. Cayton Jr. was born April 12, 1903, in Seattle, Washington, to newspaper publisher Horace R. Cayton, Sr. and Susie Revels. His mother was the daughter of Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first black American elected to the United States Senate. The Caytons maintained an upper-middle-class standard of living, including a home in a wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood and employing a full-time Japanese servant.[1] His father was active in Republican politics and had acquaintances throughout the black American intelligentsia, with Booker T. Washington as one memorable house guest.[1]
Cayton grew up in Seattle, where he graduated from Franklin High School and later the University of Washington.[2] In 1929 he moved to Chicago to attend graduate school in sociology at the University of Chicago.
Career
In 1934, Cayton went to work as a researcher for the United States Department of the Interior, co-authoring Report on the Negro's Share in Industrial Rehabilitation with George Sinclair Mitchell in 1935.[3]
Following his stint with the Interior Department, Cayton moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he taught economics at Fisk University for a time.[3] Cayton subsequently returned to government employment heading a Chicago-based research project for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for three years,[3] ultimately producing a book from research in this period, Black Workers and the New Unions (1939).
In 1940, Cayton became the director of the Parkway Community House in Chicago.[3] He would remain working in that capacity until 1949.[4]
Cayton was the coauthor, with St. Clair Drake, of the 1945 Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, a history of Chicago's South Side and its black residents from the 1840s, when the area was a major transport hub for the Underground Railroad, to the 1930s. The book was considered pioneering in its exploration of the role race relations played in creating the economic situation of lower and middle-class blacks in urban America.[5][6]
During the 1950s, Cayton worked as a researcher for the American Jewish Committee and the National Council of Churches and worked for two years as a news correspondent at the United Nations for the Pittsburgh Courier.[3] He also wrote a weekly column for the Courier for 27 years.[3]
Personal life and legacy
While living in New York during the 1950s, Cayton had an affair with Lore Segal, an author and Holocaust survivor. Segal wrote about their relationship in her novel, My First American.[7]
In 1961 Cayton moved to the Monterey Bay area of California, making his residence in the towns of Capitola and Aptos.[3] He later settled in Santa Cruz.[4] He continued to participate periodically in academic and political pursuits, including a seminar on "The Black Experience" at Cowell College, and serving as a speaker at the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center in Atlanta.[3]
Cayton died of influenza in Paris, France, on January 21, 1970, while on a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored research trip to gather material for a biography of his friend, author Richard Wright.[3] He was 66 years old at the time of his death.
