Abstract
Oliver C. Cox did a study on the marital trends of Negroes (African Americans) in 1938 and found that the sex ratio and male employment status of a given area could predict the marriage rates for said area. His findings are very similar to present sociological literature on African American marital trends. He is not, however, credited for his foundational role in the genesis of the theory of the marriageable male. He was a student in the Chicago School of Sociology during the tenure of many of the school’s most prominent faculty. Many of these leading faculty members were also his instructors in addition to presiding as president of the American Sociological Association at some point in their careers. Despite his connection to these powerful sociologists, Cox was relegated to the margins of his discipline. He has been successfully hidden from the cannon of marriageable male research.
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