Arthur Franklin Raper (1899-1979) was a rural sociologist, civil rights activist, and social science analyst both in the United States and in other countries. Born in Davidson County, N.C., Raper's early career focused on analysis of rural problems and racial discrimination in the South. In 1940, he began his 22-year career as a social scientist and research analyst for several federal government agencies. After World War II, he became involved with problems of rural development on a global scale, studying conditions in Japan, Taiwan, other Asian countries, and in North Africa and the Middle East. In 1962, he went to Comilla, Pakistan, as senior advisor to the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development. He returned to the United States in 1964 and was a visiting professor at Michigan State University until his retirement in 1967. Papers document Arthur Franklin Raper's work for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, 1926-1939; the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, 1930-1931; the Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the American Negro, 1939-1940; the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 1940-1952; the United States Foreign Operations Administration and the United States International Cooperation Administration, 1952-1962; and the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development, 1962-1964. Of special interest are data on counties and towns throughout the South, compiled for the Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the American Negro, and photographs by Jack Delano, Dorothea Lange, and others documenting the rural South during the Depression. There is much information about aiding and implementing postwar development programs in foreign countries, including Japan, Taiwan, other Asian countries, North Africa, and the Middle East. The papers include Raper's correspondence and private reflections; correspondence concerning the ten books and dozens of articles he published; extensive genealogical and biographical information and family letters and other materials; clippings; photographs; slide sets; audiotapes; and videotapes.
