ABSTRACT
This chapter explores William Edward Burghardt DuBois application of sociology to the study of the African diaspora in America in The Philadelphia Negro. For Du Bois, observations of human action were essential for understanding and changing society. Du Bois's sociological work shows clear signs of influence by Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner–Du Bois's German economic professors–and by the statistical work of Charles Booth, who studied the working class of London, England. Du Bois's book "revealed the Negro group as a symptom, not a cause, as a striving, palpitating group, and not an inert, sick body of crime; as a long historic development and not a transient occurrence." Du Bois had shown the uniqueness of the African experience in the urban United States. He described the illogical nature and historic impact of racism and argued in an eloquent voice that it was a mistake to consider the problems of the African American population as parallel to those of European immigrants.
