with the social uplift of the poor and disadvantaged. Ostensibly, she was very interested in the plight of the Philadelphia Negro: why blacks in Philadelphia were not participating in the society at levels that would give them a decent standard of living and enable them to make positive contributions to the political and social world of the city. It appears, however, that she and her associates of the College Settlement Movement had more than this on their agenda. According to David Levering Lewis,
Harrison and Wharton, like many Progressives (especially older ones), were prey to eugenic nightmares about “native stock” and the better classes being swamped by fecund, dysgenic aliens. The conservative CSA [College Settlement Association] gentry thought of poverty in epidemiological terms, as a virus to be quarantined— “a hopeless element in the social wreckage,” as [Professor Samuel McCune] Lindsay had written in a report on municipal welfare, to be “prevented, if possible, from accumulating too rapidly or contaminating the closely allied product just outside the almshouse door.” Such was the virulence of this black plague that Lindsay urged that a promising young African-American scholar, a male, be given the direction of the Seventh Ward study, instead of one of Wharton's feminists. Not only was this dangerous work, but the deplorable findings would have greater credibility if they came from a researcher of the same race as his subjects. “I was the man to do it,” said the nine-hundred-dollar-a-year assistant in sociology whose findings would determine the nature and duration of the quarantine that the city's notables intended to impose….
Harrison drew up DuBois's charge: “We want to know precisely how this class of people live; what occupations they follow; from what occupations they are excluded; how many of their children go to school; and to ascertain every fact which will throw light on this social problem.” But DuBois knew his sponsors held a theory about the race to be studied. The city was “going to the dogs because of the crime and venality of its Negro citizens.” “Something is wrong with a race that is responsible for so much crime,” the theory ran, and “strong remedies are called for.” Another junior academic (and a minority scholar at that), given the chance to impress rich and pedigreed sponsors for future assignments and fellowships, might have been conscientious about fleshing out the data but neutral or even collusive about their implications. To believe DuBois, however, he “neither knew nor cared” about the agenda of the reformers. “The world was thinking wrong about race, because it did not know.” He would teach it to think right. The task was “simple and clear-cut” for someone with his cutting-edge training in sociology. He proposed to “find out what was the matter with this area and why,” and he would ask “little advice as to procedure.” It was an opportunity—a mandate, really—whose scientific and racial implications made the politics behind his appointment unimportant.5
DuBois arrived in Philadelphia in 1896 with his new bride, moved into a room over a cafeteria in the old Seventh Ward, where the black population of the city was concentrated—an area bounded by Spruce Street on the north, South Street on the south, Sixth Street on the east, and Twenty-Third Street on the west—and set out to do a thorough study of the Philadelphia Negro. He was given an appointment in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, but it was not a professorship; he was made an “assistant in sociology.” His title was symbolic of the rather shoddy treatment DuBois felt he received at Penn. In his autobiography he looks at the whole experience with a certain disdain:
The opportunity opened at the University of Pennsylvania seemed just what I wanted. I had offered to teach social science at Wilberforce outside of my overloaded program, but I was not allowed. My vision was becoming clear. The Negro problem was in my mind a matter of systematic investigation and intelligent understanding. The world was thinking wrong about race, because it did not know. The ultimate evil was stupidity. The cure for it was knowledge based on scientific investigation. At the University of Pennsylvania I ignored the pitiful stipend. It made no difference to me that I was put down as an “assistant instructor” and even at that, that my name never actually got into the catalogue; it goes without saying that I did no instructing save once to pilot a pack of idiots through the Negro slums.
The fact was that the city of Philadelphia at that time had a theory; and that theory was that this great, rich, and famous municipality was going to the dogs because of the crime and venality of its Negro citizens, who lived largely centered in the slum at the lower end of the seventh ward. Philadelphia wanted to prove this by figures and I was the man to do it. Of this theory back of the plan, I neither knew nor cared. I saw only here a chance to study an historical group of black folk and to show exactly what their place was in the community.
I did it despite extraordinary difficulties both within and without the group. Whites said, Why study the obvious? Blacks said, Are we animals to be dissected and by an unknown Negro at that? Yet, I made a study of the Philadelphia Negro so thorough that it has withstood the criticism of forty years. It was as complete a scientific study and answer as could have then been given, with defective facts and statistics, one lone worker and little money. It revealed the Negro group as a symptom, not a cause; as a striving, palpitating group, and not an inert, sick body of crime; as a long historic development and not a transient occurrence.6
DuBois began his study with a number of very interesting premises. As indicated above, his immediate purpose was to enlighten the powerful in the city about the plight of black people in an objective, social scientific way, so that those in power would know how to go about helping them. The powerful Philadelphians required a new way to think about race problems, and with such new knowledge and insights they could then work to improve conditions for blacks. Consistent with his approach, and contrary to the eugenics theories of the day, it is clear that DuBois believed that the Negroes’ problems were rooted not in their heredity but rather in their environment and the social conditions that confronted them. Prominent among these conditions were the historical circumstances and legacy of slavery, race prejudice, and competition with foreigners who had the experience of freedom and the advantage of white skin. His task was to throw light on how these factors related to the plight of the Philadelphia Negro and to put before the “better class” of whites the fruits of his social scientific labors. This would give the powerful a base of knowledge as well as a scientific rationale and an excuse for benevolent action.
While he considered this “better class” of Philadelphians despots, he also believed (with some reservations) that they possessed the capacity for benevolence. Although these rulers exploited people, including children, there was good to come from such exploitation. With gainful employment came the learning of the work ethic, and the ability to support families, churches, and schools. The recently freed slaves required these opportunities if they were to take their place as productive citizens of Philadelphia. To a relatively large degree, Native Americans (assimilated whites), Jews, Italians, and the Irish enjoyed these benefits of gainful employment, so why not the Negro? DuBois could not understand why the capitalist, rational and calculating by nature, with the capacity for benevolence, would use these various groups, but would discriminate against people of color. Why does the Negro fare so poorly in Philadelphia? Is it that the better class of Philadelphians are simply ignorant? This puzzle was at the heart of his study, but the answer as it evolved had an unexpected consequence: it forced DuBois to alter his original premise.
DuBois conducted the study personally. He alone gathered the data, organized it, analyzed it, and formed his conclusions on the basis of it. He walked the streets of the old Seventh Ward—and one can just imagine this stiff and proper Victorian gentleman in his suit and starched shirt moving through the hurly-burly of the noisy, congested neighborhood—and talked to people, listened to people, mapped the area, made ethnographic observations, and collected descriptive statistics. His observations as well as the tables he developed are still useful to social scientists studying the city today, and if we had more studies like this one, our knowledge of the nature of urban life and culture would be greatly advanced.
In this vein, but particularly with regard to methodology, The Philadelphia Negro anticipates the work of the “Chicago school of urban sociology” led by Robert E. Park in the 1920s through the 1950s.7 But, more important, his work was
