can be traced between the lines—about the problems of black integration into American society sound strikingly contemporary. Among the intriguing aspects of The Philadelphia Negro are what it says about the author at the time, about race in urban America at the time, and about social science at the time, but even more important is the fact that many of his observations can be made—in fact are made—by investigators today. Indeed, the sobering consequences of America's refusal to address the race problem honestly, which DuBois predieted almost a hundred years ago, now haunt all Americans with a renewed intensity 130 years after emancipation. The enduring relevance of DuBois's analysis would thus argue for a reexamination of his work.
DuBois himself was a complex, fascinating man whose background shaped his point of view for The Philadelphia Negro. To appreciate fully his perspective, it is necessary to understand his early life, particularly his sheltered childhood, the unconventional way—for a black child—he was raised, and his introduction as a young man into the social and racial realities of American life.
William Edward Burghardt DuBois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, a small but prosperous mill town in the Berkshire Mountains. The few blacks in the area worked mostly as domestics in homes or summer resorts, while the factory jobs were held by Irish, German, and Czech Catholics. His father exited young DuBois's life before he turned two, and his mother supported the family with the help of well-to-do town residents, who provided both odd jobs and outright charity, eventually including a rented house much nicer than she could have afforded on her own. The opportunity to mix with the elite of the town, whose sons in general accepted him as their playmate, allowed DuBois to consider himself at least marginally a part of upper-class society while separating him from the children of immigrant mill laborers, whose social position was actually much nearer his own. He was thus able to grow up feeling more privileged than oppressed. By his own account a child of “keen sensitiveness,” he encountered relatively little discrimination, partly because he was able to avoid situations in which he sensed discrimination might occur and partly because his superior intellectual capabilities were genuinely admired. At the same time, he absorbed the culture of proper New Englanders and learned to be reserved in his thoughts and emotions and decorous in his comportment. This “habit of repression” later hampered his relations with more gregarious members of his own race.
DuBois attended the local high school, taking the college preparatory course as suggested by the principal, Frank Alvin Hosmer, who went on to become president of a missionary college in Hawaii; his school books, which had to be purchased, were, at Hosmer's request, paid for by the mother of one of his wealthy friends.1 And odd jobs were again found, for DuBois himself this time, enabling him to earn outside school hours some of the income he sacrificed by pursuing an education instead of a steady job. Upon graduating he had his heart set on going to Harvard, but neither the academic standards of his school nor his financial resources were quite adequate to enable him to go there. It is impossible to understand the exact role race feeling played in the college guidance he received. There was, however, enough feeling among the influential people of the town that DuBois should go on to college somewhere that, again at Hosmer's initiative, a scholarship was arranged through four Congregational churches to send him to Fisk University, an all-black Congregational school in Nashville, Tennessee.2
Fisk was a revelation to DuBois. He discovered among his fellow students, as well as among the poor people living in the surrounding area, the rich diversity of the black race. He was amazed at the different hues, the different kinds of black people. During the summers he went into the countryside to teach local black people reading and writing, on a mission of social uplift that grew out of the charitable orientation that was part of his upbringing. DuBois's image of himself when he arrived at Fisk sheds important light on his subsequent experiences in white society.3 For, although he was the son of a servant and had little money of his own, he had been socialized, through his education and his familiarity with upper-class people, to think of himself as part of the elite. He certainly felt himself to be far removed from the often destitute, illiterate blacks he encountered in his noble efforts to teach members of the local black community. The idea that anyone would consider him a part of that society, merely on the basis of his skin color, had not previously occurred to him. It was this introduction to life in the South that taught DuBois about racism and segregation, what it truly meant to be black in America. But in general this was largely an abstract education, for the segregation he encountered still did not result in blocked opportunity or any real personal hardship. On the contrary, he received his B.A. degree in three years, boldly applied to Harvard as a scholarship student, and was accepted as a junior.
At Harvard DuBois was faced with social but not academic discrimination. The white students did not accept him into their circles or clubs, but, coming from Fisk and his relatively new discovery of the pleasures of associating with members of his own race, DuBois was happy to socialize with other blacks and mostly did not seek out white companionship. His sensitivity continued to guide him in steering clear of situations that might have resulted in unpleasantness.
On the other hand, he was warmly received by many of the professors.4 There were many intellectual giants at Harvard at the time, figures who helped define American letters—William James, Josiah Royce, and George Santayana, among others. They befriended the young DuBois, invited him to their homes for supper, played chess with him, and advised him. So his intellectual experience at Harvard was rich and stimulating and his inferior social position, which was largely the result of his race, as well as his economic circumstances, still did not seriously interfere with his advancement.
After receiving his second B.A. (in philosophy), DuBois was encouraged to pursue a Ph.D. This he did, and in conjunction with his further studies, he arranged to spend two years in Germany studying with Max Weber, among others. This time was a wonderful interlude for him as it introduced him not only to the cultural delights of Europe but also to the satisfaction of social acceptance. His skin color was no hindrance in his relations with Europeans, either strangers or those he came to know personally. He even found himself declining the affections of the daughter of the professor in whose boarding house he lodged during his first summer in Germany. In intellectual terms, DuBois's studies in Germany were a profound influence on the course of his life's work. When he returned to the United States in 1894 he had been inspired by his academic and social experiences abroad, not to mention the work of sociologist Weber. He brought some of this inspiration to the study of the black community.
When he returned from Europe, DuBois completed his dissertation on the suppression of the African slave trade. This became Volume 1, Number 1, in the Harvard Historical Series and is still used by scholars today. With his Ph.D. pending, DuBois was now ready to look for a job. Arguably one of the most well-educated men in the country, ranked respectably in the middle of his class at the nation's most prestigious university, and with his European training as well, he felt ready to take on the challenge of teaching and working in a stimulating academic environment and had no doubt that he would obtain a suitable position. The job hunt turned out to be an education in American race relations; DuBois found that no white college was interested in hiring him, and this was a profound shock to him.
DuBois finally received an academic appointment at Wil-berforce College, an all-black school outside Dayton, Ohio, with strong evangelical underpinnings that DuBois deplored. (In fact, the emotional religiosity he experienced there seems to have so repelled him that he gave black churches very short shrift in The Philadelphia Negro, although they played an important role in the life of the community.) He taught Latin, Greek, German, and English there and also met and married Nina Gomer. He might have been obliged to stay at Wilber-force indefinitely, but after two years DuBois was invited to come to Philadelphia and undertake a social study of the black community.
The idea to commission such a study was that of Susan P. Wharton, whose family was one of Philadelphia's oldest and most influential. She marshaled the support of the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, Charles C. Harrison, and under his sponsorship Samuel McCune Lindsay of the Sociology Department enlisted DuBois to come to Philadelphia to carry
