The Southern Sociological Society (SSS) was established in 1935 by a group of colleagues in Knoxville, Tennessee in an organizational meeting April 20–21. This meeting emerged from an earlier gathering of Southern sociologists at the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association) in 1934 between Charles S. Johnson, E. T. Krueger, Wilson Gee, and probably Rupert Vance (who worked for Johnson). The organization of the Knoxville meeting was chaired by E.T. Krueger, the program made by William E. Cole, and the constitution drafted by Rupert Vance with assistance from Wilson Gee.