The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study - Softcover

Du Bois PH.D., W E B

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1684221404 ISBN 13: 9781684221400

Publisher: Martino Fine Books, 2017

Synopsis

2017 Reprint of 1899 Edition.  Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. The Philadelphia Negro is a sociological study of African Americans in Philadelphia written by W. E. B. Du Bois.  Commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania and published in 1899 with the intent of identifying social problems present in the African American community, it was the first sociological case study of a black community in the United States and one of the earliest examples of sociology as a statistically based social science. Du Bois began to gather information for the study in August 1896.  He deduced that, "the Negro problem looked at in one way is but the old-world questions of ignorance, poverty, crime, and the dislike of the stranger." He supports these claims with a statistical breakdown of the lives of African-Americans, their neighborhoods, incomes, etc.  More than one hundred years after its original publication, The Philadelphia Negro remains a classic work. It is the first, and perhaps still the finest, example of engaged sociological scholarship—the kind of work that, in contemplating social reality, helps to change it.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In 1897 a young sociologist who was already marked as a scholar of the highest promise submitted to the American Association of Political and Social Sciences a "plan for the study of the Negro problem". The product of that plan was the first great empirical book on the Negro in American society. William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963), Ph.D. from Harvard (class of 1890), was given a temporary post as Assistant in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in order to conduct in-depth studies on the Negro community in Philadelphia. The provost of the university was interested and sympathetic, but DuBois knew early on that white interest and sympathy were far from enough. He knew that scholarship was itself a great weapon in the Negro's struggle for a decent life. The Philadelphia Negro was originally published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1899. One of the first works to combine the use of urban ethnography, social history, and descriptive statistics, it has become a classic work in the social science literature. Both the issues the book raises and the evolution of DuBois's own thinking 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, about race in urban America and about social science at the time, but even more important is the fact that many of DuBois's observations can be made - in fact are being made - by investigators today. In his introduction to this edition, Elijah Anderson traces DuBois's life before his move to Philadelphia. He then examines how the neighborhood studied by DuBois has changed over the years, and he compares thestatus of blacks today with their status when the book was initially published.

About the Author:

Elijah Anderson is Charles and William L. Day Professor of Social Science, and Professor of Sociology, at the University of Pennsylvania.

About this edition

• Publisher: Martino Fine Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1684221404
• ISBN 13: 9781684221400
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 558