ABSTRACT
The opportunity that William Edward Burghardt DuBois dreamed of came in 1896, when municipal reformers in the Philadelphia settlement-house movement invited him to describe and analyze Negro participation in local politics and other social institutions. Du Bois criticized whites for offering "platitudes" and "sermons," rather than providing jobs without discrimination and giving extensive financial aid for racial uplift. More important, he believed that whites must recognize Negro business and professional men as race leaders and grant them the status and power to solve the race's problems. Du Bois conceived of The Philadelphia Negro as the start of a larger research program in which Negroes in other key American cities and in selected rural areas would be similarly studied. White sociologists ignored this appeal, and Du Bois attempted to implement the proposal on his own. With the data gathered for The Philadelphia Negro, he accepted a teaching position at Atlanta University.
