Editing W. E. B. Du Bois (section)

===Philadelphia===
After two years at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a one-year research job from the [[University of Pennsylvania]] as an "assistant in sociology" in the summer of 1896.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lewis|2009|pp=128–129}}. Du Bois resented never receiving an offer for a teaching position at Penn.</ref> He performed sociological field research in [[Philadelphia]]'s African-American neighborhoods, which formed the foundation for his landmark study, ''[[The Philadelphia Negro]]'', published in 1899 while he was teaching at Atlanta University. It was the first case study of a black community in the United States.<ref>Horne, pp. 23–24.</ref> Among his Philadelphia consultants on the project was [[William Henry Dorsey]], an artist who collected documents, paintings and artifacts pertaining to Black history. Dorsey compiled hundreds of scrapbooks on the lives of Black people during the 19th century and built a collection that he laid out in his home in Philadelphia. Du Bois used the scrapbooks in his research.

By the 1890s, Philadelphia's black neighborhoods had a negative reputation in terms of crime, poverty, and mortality. Du Bois's book undermined the stereotypes with empirical evidence and shaped his approach to segregation and its negative impact on black lives and reputations. The results led him to realize that racial integration was the key to democratic equality in American cities.<ref>Bulmer, Martin, "W. E. B. Du Bois as a Social Investigator: The Philadelphia Negro, 1899", in Martin Bulmer, Kevin Bales, and [[Kathryn Kish Sklar]], eds. ''The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–1940'' (1991), pp. 170–188.</ref> The methodology employed in ''The Philadelphia Negro'', namely the description and the mapping of social characteristics onto neighborhood areas was a forerunner to the studies under the Chicago School of Sociology.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the City|last=Caves|first=R. W.|publisher=Routledge|year=2004|pages=199–200}}</ref>

While taking part in the [[American Negro Academy]] (ANA) in 1897, Du Bois presented a paper in which he rejected [[Frederick Douglass]]'s plea for black Americans to integrate into white society. He wrote: "we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland".<ref>{{Harvnb|Lewis|2009|p=123}}. His paper was titled ''The Conservation of Races''.</ref> In the August 1897 issue of ''[[The Atlantic|The Atlantic Monthly]]'', Du Bois published "Strivings of the Negro People", his first work aimed at the general public, in which he enlarged upon his thesis that African Americans should embrace their African heritage while contributing to American society.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lewis|2009|pp=143–144}}.</ref>