By contrast, Lombard Street has retained its essentially residential character, although the residents have changed. Many of the buildings have been extensively refurbished. They are obviously well-maintained, often with security bars on the ground-floor windows. At the same time, the streets are considerably emptier than they were in DuBois's day. The current residents remain indoors or in their small backyards when at home, conspicuously unlike the population DuBois found loitering, talking, playing cards, and generally carrying on an active social life on the streets. Some of the changes along Lombard Street are the result of technology. Buses, traffic lights, and service stations were certainly not around in DuBois's day, nor was the 24-hour convenience store.
No longer is this area the center of the black population, but reminders of the black past are in evidence. In particular, four black churches, including Mother Bethel African Methodist itself (the mother church founded by Richard Allen), remain on the street, drawing their congregations from other parts of the Philadelphia area. One may gain insight into the social forces that have buffeted the neighborhood by observing the activity at the recreation area at Sixth and Lombard Streets, in the shadow of Mother Bethel. While the area immediately surrounding it has undergone gentrification and is now home mainly to professionals, the recreation area itself brings in outsiders. Often whites (teenagers to young adults) can be observed playing softball on the field while blacks play on the basketball court. The two groups tend not to mix. Young whites play basketball, too, but if too many blacks arrive, they tend to leave. The scene thus provides a small vignette of “invasion-succession.”28
In another contrast with South Street, on Lombard Street a fair number of the buildings DuBois would have visited are still standing, and much of the new construction imitates the old, although modern styles are scattered throughout. Architecturally, both South and Lombard look somewhat the way they looked a hundred years ago. It's the social scene that is different. And the most striking difference is the lack of a black residential presence. The vibrant black community DuBois studied has moved completely away. The old Seventh Ward today includes, in addition to young—and older—professionals, students from the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and other schools. While one does see black people here, they appear most often to be passing through; this neighborhood is not usually their destination.
What then has become of the “Philadelphia Negro”? The first thing to note is that any present-day study of the so-called Philadelphia Negro would encompass more than just one section of the city. Since DuBois's day, the black community has grown greatly and has dispersed widely throughout the modern Philadelphia metropolitan area. In 1890, the black population of the city of Philadelphia stood at only 39,371 (3.8 percent of the total population of 1,046,964); as of the 1990 Census, the black community numbered 631,936 (39.9 percent of the total population of 1,585,577). Heavy concentrations of the black population can now be found in West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, and Southwest Philadelphia, but also in Germantown and Mount Airy. With the two world wars, Philadelphia's black community grew by leaps and bounds. After leaving the South, blacks arrived in Philadelphia and obtained jobs in various manufacturing industries, though many were still “the last hired and the first fired” on account of race. At first, black residents did cluster in certain ghetto areas, including the old Seventh Ward, partly because they felt comfortable in such places, but also because their presence was strongly resisted elsewhere.
In the 1950s, the Civil Rights movement began in earnest, and it certainly did not escape Philadelphia. Philadelphia experienced demonstrations and riots in some of the most concentrated ghetto areas. These forces spurred on a general national resolution to incorporate the black population into American society, and this had important effects on Philadelphia neighborhoods, especially with regard to “fair housing” laws.29 It was no longer legally permissible to deny blacks housing in areas outside the ghetto. Besides changing residential patterns, the Civil Rights movement also brought about important changes in black economic opportunity. “Affirmative action” laws were established,30 and American government, business, and academia went about the business of reaching out to blacks for “fuller participation” in American employment life, particularly the middle classes.
However, just when American society was beginning to witness the successes of the Civil Rights movement, the national economy began a fundamental transition. As blacks began to gain access to large-scale manufacturing jobs, the economy began to favor service and high-technology positions. As the global economy became increasingly prominent, many manufacturing jobs were sent to third-world countries where labor was cheaper.31 The traditional black working classes fell deeper into poverty, while the more educated were being absorbed into middle-class life.32 A split developed. As a result, the black middle classes began to move away from traditional black ghetto neighborhoods, or if they remained, they tended to socially disengage.33
As blacks attained a measure of wealth and moved into formerly white neighborhoods, the whites often fled. These blacks were often followed by their poorer brethren, and when property values declined these middle-class blacks often moved away themselves, leaving the working classes and the poor predominant. In turn, city services declined in these areas, and schools were often left to deteriorate. A general perception emerged, particularly among whites, but among middle-class blacks as well, of certain neighborhoods as poor, black, and undesirable. This assumption of decline, often mixed with danger, frightened still more whites into leaving and deterred others from moving into neighborhoods with a significant black presence. The old story of persistent and widespread segregation was the result.34 Through the years, these processes have continued, buffeted by the winds of political, economic, and social change.
These trends have continued unabated up to the present time. In 1983, Philadelphia elected its first African-American mayor, an event that would have astounded DuBois. During this administration, Philadelphia had black leadership on the City Council and the local school board and important, if token, black representation in the business, educational, and legal communities. Such developments indeed represented significant progress for the Philadelphia Negro and offered real hope to ordinary Philadelphians, particularly for blacks and other minorities, but also for the larger white community as well. Yet, strikingly, these political developments, as significant as they were, failed to fundamentally alter the economic situation of most local blacks. Presently, it is even clearer that the local Philadelphia occupational structure is undergoing profound change, from manufacturing to services and high tech, at the same time that the economy is becoming increasingly global. Over the past decade, the inner-city areas of Philadelphia have suffered from active disinvestment by major corporations and by the federal government. As a result, great numbers of jobs have left the city for the suburbs, for non-metropolitan America, and for the third world. At the same time, local corporations are downsizing. These lost job opportunities are leaving an increasingly nervous black middle class and a decimated black poverty class. A kind of social strip mining of the city has occurred. And a great many Philadelphians, but particularly poor blacks— people DuBois referred to as “the submerged tenth”—are not making an effective adjustment to this situation.
For, presently, the very social programs that once aided so many and gave them hope for the future have been slashed. The Philadelphia public schools that serve so many of the black poor and working classes have been allowed to deteriorate to the point that many are not educating neighborhood children to function in today's world. With widespread joblessness, families cannot form, and social breakdown prevails in many inner-city black neighborhoods, leading to a class of street-oriented “desperate poor” who have little hope for the future and whose moral sense is sometimes lost to mere survival. For some of the most desperate people, the underground economy picks up the slack. In impoverished communities, this economy, with its cottage industries of drugs, vice, and crime, has become a major source of employment among young streetwise males, providing apparent opportunity where the regular economy provides none. This situation has become all the more widespread with the introduction of the drug “crack” cocaine. The “crackhouse” and the “carry-out” have become pervasive features of so many of these neighborhoods,
