The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. 1899. This is Du Bois' path-breaking book of social research on African Americans in an urban environment. It was originally published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Note: The 1899 edition was published with a "Preface" by Du Bois and an "Introduction" by Samuel McCune Lindsay -- both of which were not included in either the 1967 Schocken or the 1996 University of Pennsylvania imprints of the book. Du Bois' "Preface" provided a sketch of how the book fit into his overall research agenda. McCune's "Introduction" gave details of the goals and motivations that led to the research project that became The Philadelphia Negro.

The New York Times announced Du Bois's forthcoming role and position at the University of Pennsylvania (as printed in an NYT newspaper issue dated 30 September 1896, p.1).The brief notice is reproduced below in its entirety and verbatim:

Quarter of a Millennium: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1731-1981; Edited by Edwin Wolf 2nd & Marie Elena Korey, Eds. (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1981). To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Library Company of Philadelphia an exhibition was organized; this book was issued as a catalogue of that exhibition. The book contains descriptions and graphics images of selected pieces within the collection, one spanning several centuries of diverse items.
    The following quotation briefly describes The Philadelphia Negro and how DuBois utilized the library's materials for his research. The full text of the piece—designated as item 201 (as located on pp.269-270)—is presented here verbatim and in its entirety:
  201      WILLIAM E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS    The Philadelphia Negro  A Social Study. Philadelphia: Published for the University, Ginn &: Co., Selling Agents, Boston, 1899

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 An Afro-American intellectual, Harvard's first Negro Ph.D., and a teacher in Southern Black colleges, Du Bois brought a unique perspective to American scholarship. He had worked under George Santayana and William James at Harvard, and was strongly influenced by Charles Booth and Beatrice Webb, British activists who sought to understand and alleviate the condition of the urban poor. In 1896, while an assistant in sociology at the University of Penn­sylvania, Du Bois and his young wife moved into the Seventh Ward, which ran from Spruce to South streets and from Seventh Street to the Schuylkill River, the historic center of the local Black settlement.
     Assisted by workers from the nearby College Settlement House, he charted the neighborhood and surveyed the population, investigating occupations, health, population statistics, the family, education, crime, religion, social life and interracial relations. "l determined to put science into sociology," he wrote of The Philadelphia Negro; "I was going to study the facts, any and all facts . . . and by measurement and comparison, and research, work up to any generalizations which I could."
     Du Bois' study marshalled facts contradicting the prevailing racist assump­tions. He depicted the Philadelphia Negro community in all its diversity. He had no anti-historical bias, and so used 18th and early 19th-century material that had been largely ignored. And, according to his bibliography, he foundimportant resources in the Library Company, as have students of the Afro-American experience ever since. Our copy of the rare first edition was given us by the University of Pennsylvania shortly after it was published.

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 RWW's Note: Excluded here is a facsimile of the title page of The Philadelphia Negro that was displayed on p.270.

"W.E.B. DuBois in Philadelphia." Rebecca Cooper guides us through the area of Philadelphia where Du Bois lived and conducted research for the book.
    Rebecca Cooper appears to have been a student of Dr. Charlene Mires, an Associate Professor of History at Villanova University [faculty page]. Also note that no date of creation or online posting is listed on the web page. Perhaps "W.E.B. DuBois in Philadelphia" was the product of the "Historical Tour Assignment", which was a requirement for Dr. Mires' class, "History of Philadelphia" [Dr. Mires' courses].

"The Philadelphia Negro" by H.V. Nelson. This is an entry in the Encyclopedia of Black Studies edited by Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004) and is available as part of a sample of entries starting with "P". Nelson provides a synopsis of the sociological significance of DuBois's The Philadelphia Negro, including the work's pioneering insights on social stratification among the African Americans of the Seventh Ward as well as the exhaustive interviewing methodology used by DuBois.

The Philadelphia Negro and the Smart Library on Children and Families. This series of web pages, produced by the National Institute for Social Science Information in conjunction with the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, examines various themes of The Philadelphia Negro, using data from the book.

Profile of The Philadelphia Negro by Robert W. Williams, your web site facilitator. Please note: to read more than the first 600 words of the article requires daily, monthly, or yearly membership at the Literary Encyclopedia.

 A brief review by William F. Blackman of The Philadelphia Negro, together with Booker T. Washington's The Future of the American Negro. It was published in the Yale Review (Vol. Ninth (May 1900): pp. 110-111), of which Blackman was a co-editor. The full text of the review is presented below verbatim and in its entirety:

The Philadelphia Negro. A Social Study. By W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Ph.D. Together with a special report on domestic service, by Isabel Eaton, A.M. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania; Series in Political Economy and Public Law. Philadelphia, published for the University, 1899---8vo, pp. xx, 520.

The Future of the American Negro. By Booker T. Washington. Boston, Small, Maynard & Co., 1899---16mo, pp. x, 244.

    The first of these works is not merely a credit to its author and to the race of which he is a member; it is a credit to American scholarship, and a distinct and valuable addition to the world's stock of knowledge concerning an important and obscure theme. It is the sort of book of which we have too few, and of which it is impossible that one should have too many. That the "negro problem" is among the gravest and most involved, and difficult, of American life, is increasingly obvious; it ought by this time to be equally obvious that we can derive no considerable help toward its solution from the sentimental or prejudiced writings which abound, both north and south, on the subject. Here is an inquiry, covering a specific field and a considerable period of time, and prosecuted with candor, thoroughness, and critical judgment, its results being interpreted with intelligence and sympathy. We have no space to report or discuss the contents of the work, but we have long held that it is in monographs like this that we shall be likely to find the most trustworthy help in solving our great racial problem. If a similar study could be made in a score of cities, in various parts of the country, and in particular rural districts of the south, a basis of accurate and detailed knowledge concerning the condition of the race would be laid, on which conclusion could safely be founded.
    Mr. Washington's work is not that of a scholar, but of a shrewd, sane and tactful leader of the people and administrator of affairs. He knows both races, and both sections of the country, and seeks to be a mediator between extreme opinions and programs. His book is a contribution, not to knowledge, but to that good temper and good sense which is perhaps of equal importance.

W. F. B.     

 Note 1: "Negro" is not capitalized in the original text. Moreover, we might wonder about Du Bois's reaction to the tone of the review, which -- although laudatory of Du Bois' efforts -- did not fully escape a patronizing tenor.

 Note 2: It can be observed that W.F. Blackman seemed to be in agreement with the research agenda that Du Bois had written about in his "Preface" to the 1899 edition of The Philadelphia Negro (TPN). With reference to TPN and his recent "Negroes of Farmville, Virginia" study [info], Du Bois wrote in TPN's Preface:
     It is my earnest desire to pursue this particular form of study far enough to constitute a fair basis of induction as to the present condition of the American Negro. If, for instance, Boston in the East, Chicago and perhaps Kansas City in the West, and Atlanta, New Orleans and Galveston in the South, were studied in a similar way, we should have a trustworthy picture of Negro city life. Add to this an inquiry into similarly selected country districts, and certainly our knowledge of the Negro would be greatly increased. The department of history and economics of Atlanta University, where I am now situated, is pursuing certain lines of inquiry in this general direction. I hope that funds may be put at our disposal for this larger and more complete scheme.
     Finally, let me add that I trust that this study with all its errors and shortcomings will at least serve to emphasize the fact that the Negro problems are problems of human beings; that they cannot be explained away by fantastic theories, ungrounded assumptions or metaphysical subtleties. They present a field which the student must enter seriously, and cultivate carefully and honestly. And until he has prepared the ground by intelligent and discriminating research, the labors of philanthropist and statesman must continue to be, to a large extent, barren and unfruitful.

 Note 3: Washington's The Future of the American Negro can be downloaded in several formats at the Internet Archive [here].

A brief comment on The Philadelphia Negro by Charles R. Anderson was published in The Dial: A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information, Vol. XXVIII, No. 335 (June 1, 1900). Henderson's laudatory one-paragraph comment was incorporated into his much larger review essay entitled "Social Discussion and Reform" (pp. 436-440), which covered a range of books by different authors. The passage below (from pp. 439-440) is the comment in its entirety:
  Note: "Negro" is not capitalized in the original text.

An anonymous note in the Virginia School Journal (1896) announced that DuBois would be conducting research for the University of Pennsylvania (v.5,n.9 (November 1896): p.315). The note is presented here verbatim and in its entirety:
     Dr. W. E. Dubois, colored, [sic] is the first one of his race to be appointed to a fellowship in the University of Pennsylvania. He will be an assistant to Dr. Lindsay in his work in sociology, but will not be considered a member of the faculty, and will not lecture at the college. His work will consist of house to house investigations among the colored [sic] settlements, and the University authorities will receive the results of his investigations. Dr. Dubois was graduated from Harvard College several years ago, and he has studied in the German Universities.

"The Color Line" by H.M. Jenkins (1900) and published in the Friends' Intelligencer, v.57, n.2 (January 13, 1900): pp.28-29. In this short article Jenkins criticized employment discrimination against African Americans. He reached this conclusion:
     The manner in which the Negroes are shut out from employment is a large part of the explanation why many of them do not get on better. The question may fairly be asked, How can they be expected to get on, if they are not allowed to work like other people? The whites, as we all know, have a large percentage of failures, when every avenue of occupation is opened to them.
Jenkins discussed The Philadelphia Negro, citing some of the demographic data contained therein. He also wrote:
     A very strong presentation, though perfectly calm and dispassionate, is made in regard to this subject of Negro employment in northern cities by a Report, which has taken the form and bulk of a large volume, entitled "The Philadelphia Negro: a Social Study." The author is W. E. B. DuBois, Ph. D., himself one of the colored race. He was sometime an Assistant in the University of Pennsylvania, and is now Professor of History and Economics in Atlanta University, Georgia. The plan of the book was suggested by a Philadelphia Friend, interested for the advancement of the Colored People, Susan Parrish Wharton, and has been most intelligently carried out by Dr. DuBois, who has had the cordial support of the authorities of the University of Pennsylvania, under whose patronage the book appears.

     This book, let me say in brief, is a most interesting study of the subject to which it relates. It presents a vast array of facts and statistics. Any one who cares to know something accurately about the situation of the colored people of the city of Philadelphia should make it a point to examine Dr. DuBois's volume.

"The Negro in Business" by Booker T. Washington (1901). He cited material from Du Bois' The Philadelphia Negro on the Black businesses in the city. Washington's article documents various cases of African American success in different enterprises. It was originally published in Gunton's Magazine, Vol. XX (March 1901): 209-219 [download page for the entire Volume XX at the Internet Archive].

Lucy Maynard Salmon in Progress in the Household (1906) examined domestic service and its study. She praised the research conducted by Isabel Eaton that became part of TPN:
    The statistician, like the librarian, is also quick to create as well as to respond to the demand for information of a serious nature, and this has been shown in the growing recognition of the importance of domestic service as a field for statistical research. Among the most thorough of these statistical investigations is that carried on by Miss Isabel Eaton,—recently fellow of the College Settlements' Association,—in regard to negro domestic service in the seventh ward of Philadelphia.1 Miss Eaton has made an exhaustive study of one phase of the subject in a limited area, considering not only the number of negroes thus employed, but the methods of living, savings, and expenditures, amusements and recreations, length and quality of the service, conjugal condition, illiteracy, and health. The work has been done in a thoroughly scientific manner, and the results form an admirable presentation of negro service in a single ward of one city.  [pp.13-14]
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[Footnote 1, bottom of p.14:]
   1 Isabel Eaton, "A Special Report on Domestic Service," in The Philadelphia Negro, by W. E. B. Du Bois. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1899.
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 Note 1 (Citation): Salmon, Lucy Maynard. Progress in the Household. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906.

 Note 2: "Negro" and "Negroes" are not capitalized in the original text.

"The Sociology of Race in the United States" by Elijah Anderson and Douglas S. Massey. This is Chapter 1 of the Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States (Elijah Anderson [faculty page] and Douglas S. Massey [faculty page], editors; NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001). The authors argue for the importance of The Philadelphia Negro in the field of U.S. sociology:
 The trouble with the standard account of American sociology’s birth is that it happened not at the University of Chicago in the 1920s, but at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1890s; rather than being led by a group of classically influenced white men, it was directed by W. E. B. Du Bois, a German-trained African American with a Ph.D. from Harvard. His 1899 study, The Philadelphia Negro, anticipated in every way the program of theory and research that later became known as the Chicago School. Although not generally recognized as such, it represented the first true example of American social scientific research, preceding the work of Park and Burgess by at least two decades. Were it not for the short-sighted racism of Penn’s faculty and administration, which refused to acknowledge the presence -- let alone the accomplishments of a black man or to offer him a faculty appointment, the maturation of the discipline might have been advanced by two decades and be known to posterity as the Pennsylvania School of Sociology. Instead, Du Bois went on to a distinguished career as a public intellectual, activist, and journalist, and the University of Chicago, not the University of Pennsylvania, came to dominate the field.

"Homage to DuBois: Revisiting the Problem of the Color Line." This anonymously reported news article summarizes a conference in 1999 on DuBois at the University of Pennsylvania. Although covering various aspects of DuBois' life and works, several comments relate to DuBois' study of The Philadelphia Negro and later analyses of the city by Elijah Anderson. Reported comments are by Drs. Elijah Anderson, Mary Frances Berry, James E. Bowman, and Fatimah L.C. Jackson.

"A Strong Man to Run a Race: W.E.B. DuBois and the Politics of Black Masculinity at the Turn of the Century" by Ayumu Kaneko. Published in
The Japanese Journal of American Studies, Vol. 14 (2003): 105-122. Kaneko examines The Philadelphia Negro and other DuBoisian works (e.g. The Souls of Black Folk and Darkwater), as well as the Niagara Movement. Kaneko wishes to
 address the question of what racial and class relations DuBois's apparently pro-feminist discourse constructed. To answer ... the question requires us to regard masculinity as not fixed but fluid and constructed in relation to representations of woman, and to analyze how DuBois positioned his own elite black male agency through pro-feminist discursive practices.

"W.E.B. Du Bois' Urban Sociology: Reflections on African American Quality of Life in Philadelphia" by Robert A. Wortham (Sociation Today, 6:1, Spring 2008). Wortham summarized The Philadelphia Negro and its abiding significance. In addition, he put some of the book's data through statistical analysis, reaching a conclusion that reinforced Du Bois's view that social class was significantly related to the mortality of African Americans in the Seventh Ward of Philadelphia. In his conclusion Wortham wrote:
  [W]hat are some of the lasting sociological contributions associated with this pioneering empirical study of urban life? In his classic 1938 study, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," Wirth identified size, density and heterogeneity as three fundamental identifying characteristics of urban society. While Du Bois did not directly address density issues in The Philadelphia Negro, he did investigate the size and the heterogeneous nature of Philadelphia's African American community. Distinct social classes within the Seventh Ward were specified, and Du Bois particularly addressed the circumstances of the "submerged tenth," a group comprised of the urban poor and criminal classes. This group appears to foreshadow Wilson's (1996; 1987) discussions of an urban "underclass" (Bobo, 2007).
 Du Bois also identified and evaluated additional structural factors impacting African American quality of life in urban settings, like organizational support networks, family structure, living conditions, and racial discrimination. However, rather than taking a "system-blame" or "culture-blame" approach to the study of social problems, Du Bois focused on the interaction between structural inequality and "social uplift." These social forces were perceived as being complimentary rather than mutually exclusive. [. . . .] Methodological triangulation is utilized to provide a comprehensive analysis of life in Philadelphia's Seventh Ward just before the turn of the nineteenth century. Census data, a survey of the Seventh Ward and ethnographic description were combined in this inductive study of a particular social group in a specific social environment.
 Within this seminal study, the reader encounters early formulations of the theory of ethnic succession, the role of economic enclaves in minority communities, a functional analysis of the Black Church and an awareness of the inverse association between mortality and social class. The Philadelphia Negro also provided a case study for demonstrating how quantitative and qualitative data analysis can be employed as complimentary research approaches.
 Note 1: An Internet search for Louis Wirth's "Urbanism as a Way of Life" (American Journal of Sociology, 44:1 (July 1938): 1-24) may yield (un)expected dividends: e.g., via Google.

 Note 2: Citations to Wilson and Bobo, as referenced in the text, are:
* Bobo, Lawrence. 2007. "Introduction." In The Philadelphia Negro, by W.E.B. Du Bois, xxv-xxx. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears. New York: Knopf.

"W.E.B. DuBois's Sociology: The Philadelphia Negro and Social Science" by Tukufu Zuberi [web site]. This is a freely accessible outline/summary of a full-length article (which is available via paid subscription). The full-length article was published in the The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 595, (September 2004).

A Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the People of Colour, of the City and Districts of Philadelphia by Anonymous (Philadelphia: Printed by Kite & Walton,1849). While significant in its own right, DuBois's TPN was not the first effort at surveying African Americans in Philadelphia. He cited A Statistical Inquiry (ASI), which "under the direction of some members of the Society of Friends" conducted research in late 1847 into various demographic factors, like occupations, age groups, real estate holdings, and the number of free and enslaved Blacks. Indeed, DuBois referenced the data found in ASI as a way to understand the social development of African Americans in the city.

Isabel Eaton's "Receipts and Expenditures of Certain Wage-Earners in the Garment Trades" (Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. IV, New Series, No. 30 (June 1895): pp. 135-180).
     Prior to her research on African American domestic workers for The Philadelphia Negro Isabel Eaton had studied urban workers. In this particular article Eaton documents the conditions under which workers in Chicago and New York labored in various types of clothing factories, examining daily and piece-work wages and the long hours of labor as well as unsafe working conditions -- many in places she called "sweat shops". She interviewed union leaders, toured factories, and used government reports. Eaton examined the average expenditures on rent, clothing, and food. She noted the large numbers of garment workers who were in debt (pp. 168, 176) and the recent increases in the average living costs calculated as a percentage of average wages (p. 142). Eaton concluded that the workers in the New York and Chicago garment trades were "suffering chiefly two evils: first, high rents paid for unsanitary houses; second, low wages for too long a day's work." (p. 178). It can also be observed that she did not focus on the race of the workers she studied for this article.

"The Negroes of Philadelphia" by Richard R. Wright, Jr. Wright provided a short summary of African American life and conditions in Philadelphia, using categories similar to Du Bois' The Philadelphia Negro. Wright gathered data from the U.S. Census of 1900 and from personal observations and interviews. He published it in two articles in 1907.

The Negro in Pennsylvania: A Study in Economic History by Richard R. Wright, Jr. (Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern Printers, 1912). Referring in several places to The Philadelphia Negro, Wright's geographic scope spanned the state of Pennsylvania. He concentrated chiefly on the economic aspects of African Americans, such as occupations, property ownership, crime, and poverty. He utilized data primarily from the 1900 U.S. Census. Wright noted the overall economic and educational progress achieved by African Americans in the state.