Frank Hamilton Hankins was born on September 27, 1877 in Wilkshire, Ohio. He grew up in Kansas, where he received an A.B. from Baker University in 1901. He served as superintendent of schools in Waverly, Kansas for two years before entering Columbia University. As a graduate student and fellow in statistics, Hankins was strongly influenced by the philosophy and logic of John Stuart Mill, the sociology of Giddings, Spencer, and Ward, and the quantitative work of Quetelet, Galton, and Pearson. His doctoral dissertation, "Adolphe Quetelet as Statitician" (1908), was an important contribution to the development of empirical sociology.

Hankins served as a member of the Clark University faculty for sixteen years (1906-22), and head of the Department of Political and Social Science beginning in 1908. Clark, at the time, was under the leadership of the influential psychologist G. Stanley Hall, and was visited by famous psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. Thus, it was a center of research, graduate study, and stimulating scholarly controversy. Hankins contributed numerous articles to scholarly journals, lectured frequently at other universities, studied social conditions in Europe before and after World War I, and taught at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politique in Paris in 1921.

Hankins joined the Smith College faculty in 1922 as Professor of Sociology, and for many years he served as department chairman, until he left Smith in 1946. Under the presidency of William Allan Neilson, Smith was an exciting and non-cloistered campus. Hankins, in his years at Smith, built up an excellent group of sociologists on campus, which included people such as Harry Elmer Barnes, Ray Billington, G.A. Borgese, Merle Curti, and Harold Faulkner, among others. Hankins was very active on many different boards and organizations on population and individual rights. In 1930, Hankins was elected the first President of the American Sociological Society, and in 1945 President of the American Population Association. He also taught and lectured widely, serving on the faculties of Amherst College, Columbia, Berkeley, the Army Center at Biarritz, and, following his retirement from Smith, the University of Pennsylvania. In 1936, he studied, on the scene, social conditions in Nazi Germany.

Hankins contributed widely to scholarly journals, anthologies, and the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. His ground-breaking study, The Racial Basis of Civilization: A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine, was published in 1926. In 1928, he published An Introduction to the Study of Society, a textual treatise presenting his principal theoretical and substantive concerns and convictions. Hankins' writings reveal a keen interest in the role of biological factors in social life and history and, conversely, in the role of such selective processes as urbanization, education, persecution, and war in the determination of population quantity and quality. He argued in favor of birth control, more for the lower classes and less for the privileged. He condemned authoritarian institutions and practices and supported the maximization of opportunity for all. He also denounced racist policies and believed that racially mixed populations were physically and socially beneficial.

Hankins died of a heart attack at the age of 92 on January 24, 1970 in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. At the time of his death, he was an eminent sociologist and demographer, distinguished author and lecturer, provocative and influential teacher, an ardent proponent of a strictly scientific sociology, and a concerned humanist.

The Frank Hamilton Hankins Papers span a period from 1922 to 1968, and much of the material is composed of his numerous publications. The collection also covers his involvement in various societies and organizations. The folders are arranged alphabetically, and the hefty folders full of letters and notes regarding Hankins' various organizations point to his involvement in the sociological world. Overall, the Frank Hamilton Hankins Papers are composed of articles, correspondence, written speeches, photographs, minutes from meetings, publications, and information from Hankins' time at different universities, such as Columbia and Clark.

In addition to some chronologies of Hankins' history, the biographical materials also contain some articles and press releases at the time of his death. Much of the information is repetitious, but they are a good source of factual insight.

The correspondence and subject files include the many letters Hankins wrote to his peers over the years, on general subjects as well as specific ones. In addition to general correspondence, there is one box of material devoted specifically to the correspondence between Hankins and his colleague Harry Elmer Barnes. This series also contains several subject files of a variety of topics.

Copies of Hankins' publications comprise the largest part of this collection. There is some information on debates Hankins was involved with and lectures he gave. Also, there are some materials on Hankins' contributions to The New Humanist, a journal that aims to cover unrestricted and liberal viewpoints. Hankins' collaboration with Farrar & Rinehart Publishers is also well documented. This file includes correspondence, notes, monetary agreements, and memorandums. Apparently, Hankins was editing several textbooks on sociology. There also seems to be a paper on Hankins' thoughts on American Development.

This collection is organized into four series:

• I. Biographical Materials
• II. Correspondence
• III. Subject Files/Organizations
• IV. Speeches/Publications

Please use the following format when citing materials from this collection:

Frank Hamilton Hankins Papers, Box #, Smith College Archives.

The Frank Hamilton Hankins Papers were processed by Katrina Cokeng, 2002, CDO Archival Intern in 1999-2000.