Ira De Augustine Reid papers

Ira De Augustine Reid was born on July 2, 1901, in Clifton Forge, Virginia. He graduated from Morehouse College in 1922 and received his master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1925. Reid received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1939.

Reid was the industrial secretary of the New York Urban League from 1924 to 1928 and its research director from 1928 to 1934. From 1934 to 1946, he served as professor of sociology at Atlanta University. Early in his career, Reid also taught at Columbia University, the Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, and at universities in Nigeria and Japan. Reid joined the faculty of Haverford College in 1946, becoming the College's first Black tenured professor. He became chair of the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology in 1947, a position he held until his retirement in 1966.

Reid served as the president of the Eastern Sociological Society and served on the boards of the National Child Labor Commission, the National Urban League, the Planned Parenthood Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee, the American Cancer Society, and the Community Chest of Philadelphia.

Ira De Augustine Reid married twice, first to Gladys Russell Scott, who died in 1956, and then to Anna "Anne" Margaret Cooke in 1958. Reid died in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania on August 15, 1968.