Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. [Together with] A Special Report on Domestic Service by Isabel Eaton. [Within] Publications of the University of Pennsylvania Series in Political Economy and Public Law. No. 14.

Philadelphia: Published for the University, 1899. Full Description:

DU BOIS, W.E.B.. The Philadelphia Negro. A Social Study. [Together with] A Special Report on Domestic Service by Isabel Eaton. [Within] Publications of the University of Pennsylvania Series in Political Economy and Public Law. No. 14. Philadelphia: Published for the University, 1899.

First edition. Large octavo (10 x 6 3/4 inches; 255 x 172 mm). xx, 520, [iv, advertisements] pp. Bound without the final two leaves of publisher's ads. With the original front printed title wrapper [pg i-ii], bound in. No back wrapper. With two folding maps of the Seventh Ward, of which one is printed in color, "The Seventh Ward of Philadelphia. The Distribution of Negro Inhabitants throughout the Ward, and their Social Condition"

Full modern blue cloth with original front wrapper bound in. Spine ruled and lettered in gilt. Front wrapper with some repairs and reinforcements and a library sticker removal from the blank lower margin. Final leaf of ads with some reinforcement along fore-edge. A minor dampstain to fore-edge of text block, not affecting the leaves. Overall a near fine copy.

"In 1899, the University of Pennsylvania published The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, the first scholarly race study of an urban place in what became a growing trend of Progressive-era social surveys. The massive report about Philadelphia's Seventh Ward became a distinctive (and still relevant) landmark in the annals of sociological study and social advocacy...In spring 1896, at the suggestion of leading citizen Susan P. Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia's own College Settlement sent for the rising African American scholar William E. Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), then a professor at Ohio's Wilberforce University, to conduct a study of the city's black community, which many critics held responsible for a post-depression (1893-96) rise in crime and disorder. Accepting the invitation, even at the lowly title of "Assistant Instructor," Du Bois began in August 1896 to 'ascertain something of the geographical distribution of this race, their occupations and daily life, their homes, their organizations and, above all, their relation to their million white fellow-citizens.' The massive report that followed went far beyond the Hull-House model, and far beyond what its patrons anticipated or perhaps desired." (Steven McGrail, Ph.D., Philadelphia Encyclopedia).

HBS 69015.

$2,000.