The Philadelphia Negro

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian and civil rights activist who served as editor of the NAACP's journal Crisis. His seminal works include The Souls of Black Folks; Black Reconstruction in America; and Dusk of Dawn, among many others. Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University.

"A century ago, Du Bois published The Philadelphia Negro, a work now recognized as a sociological classic. He developed a highly detailed portrait of black social life in Philadelphia. Part of the legacy of his analysis has lost the theoretical holism which linked structural issues of the economy and labor market dynamics to more social psychological and microsocial issues of prejudice and interpersonal discrimination. Sociology would do well to revisit the model Du Bois established." (Lawrence D. Bobo, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March 2000)) "What made Du Bois's study remarkable in its day was its rejection of prevailing assumptions of inherent racial differences, thus bearing on issues much wider than those indicated by its title. It is also notable as a thoroughly modern piece of social research. The problems faced by Philadelphia's blacks, he argued, had nothing to do with their supposed racial proclivities, but derived from the way they had been treated in the past and their relegation in the present to the most menial and lowest-paying jobs." (Times Literary Supplement)