In 1899 W. E. B. Du Bois published his monumental and groundbreaking study The Philadelphia Negro. After a year of intensive research on the Black population of Philadelphia, this 500+ page book broke new ground in the burgeoning field of sociology. The book has been republished a number of times over the years, each an occasion for a new editor to frame the book with their introductory comments. Here is a brief survey of these various editions of the book
Lindsay, University of Pennsylvania (1899)
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, 1899).
Samuel McCune Lindsay, “Introduction,” vii–xv.
Samuel McCune Lindsay (1869-1960) was professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania at the time. Lindsay provides a good example of the “official” view of the study by the predominantly white university which sponsored it:
The purpose of the inquiry is to furnish local agencies and individuals, interested in improving the condition of the Negro population of Philadelphia, a more comprehensive knowledge of the existing condition of Negroes, so that such work may be directed in the most helpful channels.
“Introduction,” xi.
This first edition is available electronically for free on Google Books.
Baltzell, Schocken Books (1967)
W. E. B Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (New York: Schocken Books, 1967)
E. Digby Baltzell, “Introduction,” ix–xliv.
It was nearly 70 years before the book was first republished, and the introduction was written by E. Digby Baltzell (1915–1996). Baltzell was born in Philadelphia and eventually became professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Baltzell describes the obscurity into which Du Bois’s work had fallen at the time:
A classic is sometimes defined as a book that is often referred to but seldom read. The Philadelphia Negro, written by a young scholar who subsequently became one of the three most famous Negro leaders in American history, surely meets this requirement. Though always referred to and frequently quoted by specialists, it is now seldom read by the more general student of sociology. For not only has the book been out of print for almost half a century; it has been virtually unobtainable, as my own experience of almost twenty years of searching in vain for a copy in second-hand bookstores attests. Even at the University of Pennsylvania, under whose sponsorship the research was undertaken and the book published, although one copy has been preserved in the archives and one on microfilm, the sole copy listed in the catalogue and available for students in the library has been unaccountably missing from the shelves for several years. In writing this introduction, I am using a copy lent me by my good friend, Professor Ira Reid of Haverford College, a one-time colleague and friend of the late Professor DuBois at Atlanta University. Modem students, then, will certainly benefit from a readily available paperback edition of this study of the Negro community in Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Baltzell, “Introduction,” ix–x.
The introduction gives a nice overview of Du Bois’s life, and situates his Philadelphia study in the context of other scholarship.
This edition is available electronically for free at the Internet Archive.
Aptheker, Kraus-Thompson (1973)
William E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1973)
Herbert Aptheker, “Introduction,” 5–31
Herbert Aptheker (1915–2003) was chosen to be the literary executor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s voluminous writings. 1973 saw the republication of a number of Du Bois’s works in “The Collected Published Works of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.” Du Bois’s widow, Shirley Graham Du Bois, praised Aptheker’s work in bringing out this edition:
Here I would pay tribute to Herbert Aptheker. Seldom does one find such a combination of scholarship, research tenacity and dedication as this editor has brought to the Du Bois project. He has worked for years-searching, checking with Du Bois’ extensive correspondence, annotating, adding footnotes where necessary, placing entries in the historical context as revealed in the correspondence and personal papers.
“Preface by Mrs. Shirley Graham Du Bois,” The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade, 6.
Indeed, Aptheker’s scholarship is remarkable, and his introductions to the volumes in this series are essential reading in the scholarship of Du Bois. Here’s how Aptheker concludes his introduction:
Du Bois’ The Philadelphia Negro was the first scientific study in Afro-American sociology and the pioneer study in urban sociology in the United States. In the area of scholarship Du Bois had accomplished this by the time he had reached his thirtieth year. The dominant white world of universities and so-called scholarship having rejected his explicit appeals for joint work, Du Bois turned his eyes to the South, went to Atlanta University, wrote the text of the Philadelphia study and made of the Atlanta University Conferences for the Study of the Negro Problems world-famous centers for the advancement of science.
“Introduction,” 30–31.
Aptheker’s edition can be hard to find, but used copies are available (bookfinder).
Additionally, Aptheker also includes brief comments on The Philadelphia Negro in his Annotated bibliography of the published writings of W. E. B. Du Bois.
Green and Driver, University of Chicago Press (1978)
W. E. B. Du Bois On Sociology and the Black Community, ed. Dan S. Green and Edwin D. Driver (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)
Dan S. Green and Edwin D. Driver, “Introduction,” 1–48.
In 1978, two sociology professors edited this anthology by Du Bois in order “to make available to sociologists and other interested scholars a wide selection of the sociological writings of W.E.B. Du Bois” (1). Green was professor of sociology at Kentucky State University, and Driver at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Green and Driver’s nearly 50-page “Introduction” is a great survey of Du Bois’s scholarship in the field of sociology. Here’s how they assess his overall reception:
Du Bois rightly deserves a place among the giants of sociology for his work during the years 1896-1910, when sociology was being estab lished as an academic discipline…
Important and valuable as his contributions may be, historically or currently, Du Bois has not been accorded by early or later white sociologists the respect and recognition that he deserves. His continuous neglect by the sociological fraternity (hereafter meaning white sociologists only) until 1971 constitutes an interesting and perhaps instructive datum for the “sociology of sociology.” It is of interest, however, to note the recent establishment of two awards which carry Du Bois’ name.
Du Bois’ neglect meant that generations of sociologists, graduate students, and undergraduates in sociology would obtain no knowl edge of him, or at best only a faint, blurred image of him as a black intellectual, but not as a sociologist.
“Introduction,” 39, 41.
This volume includes a 25-page excerpt from The Philadelphia Negro. The book is accessible for free on the Internet Archive.
Anderson, University of Pennsylvania Press (1995)
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
Elijah Anderson, “Introduction,” ix–xxxvi.
It was over 20 years until the next complete edition of the book was published again, this time by the University of Pennsylvania. Elijah Anderson (1943–) is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University. He expressed his hopes for the republication in his opening paragraph:
The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study by W .E.B. DuBois was originally published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1899. One of the first works to combine the use of urban eth nography, social history, and descriptive statistics, it has become a classic work in the social science literature. For that reason alone it is an important study that deserves to be read by stu dents of sociology and others interested in the development of the discipline in particular or in American intellectual history in general. W.E.B. DuBois is a founding father of American sociology, but, unfortunately, neither this masterpiece nor much of DuBois’s other work has been given proper recognition; in fact, it is possible to advance through a graduate program in sociology in this country without ever hearing about DuBois. It is my hope that this reprint edition will help rectify a situation undoubtedly rooted in the racial relationships of the era in which the book was first published.
“Introduction,” ix.
This edition is accessible for free on the Internet Archive.
Katz and Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania (1998)
Michael B. Katz and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds., W.E.B. DuBois, Race, and the City : The Philadelphia Negro and Its Legacy (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)
This book is not an edition of The Philadelphia Negro, but a collection of essays by “a group of the nation’s leading historians and sociologists” celebrating “the centenary of his project through a reappraisal of his book.”
Essays include:
- Mia Bay, “The World Was Thinking Wrong About Race”: The Philadelphia Negro and Nineteenth-Century Science
- Thomas C. Holt, W.E.B. DuBois’s Archaeology of Race: Re-Reading “The Conservation of Races”
- Robert Gregg, Giant Steps: W.E.B. DuBois and the Historical Enterprise
- Jacqueline Jones, “Lifework” and Its Limits: The Problem of Labor in The Philadelphia Negro
- Tera W. Hunter, “The `Brotherly Love’ for Which This City Is Proverbial Should Extend to All”: The Everyday Lives of Working-Class Women in Philadelphia and Atlanta in the 1890s
- Antonio McDaniel, The “Philadelphia Negro” Then and Now: Implications for Empirical Research
- V. P. Franklin, Operation Street Corner: The Wharton Centre and the Juvenile Gang Problem in Philadelphia, 1945-1958
- Carl Husemoller Nightingale, The Global Inner City: Toward a Historical Analysis
- Elijah Anderson, Drugs and Violence in the Inner City
This book is accessible for free on the Internet Archive.
Bobo, Oxford University Press (2007)
W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro : A Social Study (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)
Lawrence Bobo, “Introduction,” xxv–xxx.
Oxford University Press has published the most recent edition of Du Bois’s books, “The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois,” a 19 volume series edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This is the series that I am (slowly!) collecting and the edition of The Philadelphia Negro that I own.
Lawrence Bobo is W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences and the Dean of Social Science at Harvard University. His introduction begins thus:
The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, first published by W. E. B Du Bois in 1899, was then and remains to this day a magnificent scholarly achievement. It documents in systematic and meticulous detail the living circumstances at the close of the nineteenth century of the largest black population outside the South. In its use of a systematic method of community social survey, it shows the most rigorous and sophisticated empirical social science of its era In an understated but ultimately clear and convincing manner. The Philadelphia Negro advances both a framework for studying the black community and a powerful sociological—not biological, nor psychological, nor otherwise victim-blaming account— of the factors causing black disadvantage. And it shows how careful social research might be linked fruitfully to the ambition of reform and advocacy for social justice on behalf of a stigmatized people.
“Introduction,” xxv.
The introduction is relatively brief, but a nice survey of the current state of scholarship on the book.
This edition is accessible for free on the Internet Archive.
Morris, The Scholar Denied (2015)
Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015)
While this book is not focused specifically on The Philadelphia Negro, it includes a masterful account of Du Bois’s role in founding the discipline of sociology and includes extensive treatment of The Philadelphia Negro in particular. This book is a masterpiece, a tour-de-force, one of the best books of the year for me, and gives the best account I’ve ever read of the historical context surrounding Du Bois, Black scholarship, and white academia.
This one isn’t available online; you’ll have to purchase your own copy.
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