The Philadelphia Negro. W. E. B. Du BoisЧитать онлайн книгу.
blacks should have been reaching out, setting examples, helping out their own brethren.27 In noting an absence of leadership, he encouraged people to take on such roles. He assumed that if they did the situation for blacks would improve.
DuBois's personal engagement in these problems, along with the unique background that informed his preconceptions, make the whole book provocative. He is not out to transform the system radically. He appears to be very clearly interested in reforming the system, his insights into the nonexistent benevolent despot notwithstanding. He feels that if blacks work hard and act decently, their lives will improve. And he hopes that in presenting the situation plainly in The Philadelphia Negro he will persuade the capitalists to support the forces that encourage the economic participation of black Americans and thus to make life better for all Americans. A hundred years after DuBois made these observations, an appraisal of his predictions reveals just how far-sighted a social scientist he was.
The Philadelphia Negro Today
What would DuBois find if he walked the streets of the Seventh Ward today? The area has certainly changed. The upper-class WASPs have mostly been routed and have moved to the suburbs. From DuBois's day through the middle of the twentieth century, the old Seventh Ward remained a major “Negro section” of the city. It continued to attract blacks from the South, and during the two world wars it swelled. But during the 1950s and early 1960s, a federal program known as “urban renewal” emerged. Through this program, large tracts of the black community were declared “slums” and thereby made eligible for formal “condemnation.” The local redevelopment authority thus obtained possession of these sections of the city and then made them available to developers who promised to “renew” the area in accord with its historical architecture. As this occurred, the social class and complexions of the residents changed. The general area has become increasingly well-to-do and white. It is now an upper-middle-class community increasingly made up of the present-day counterparts of the ethnic whites with whom the blacks of DuBois's day often clashed. The descendants of the ethnic whites are for the most part tolerant of the few blacks who remain, having in large part assimilated and divested themselves of their particularistic ethnic identities. However, in race relations, a strong caste line still exists.
Major changes have occurred in housing use. Physically, the neighborhood consists of spacious urban townhouses along the main streets, with much smaller houses, originally servants'quarters, on tiny streets behind them. The tangle of small streets and alleyways that DuBois found swarming with criminal and morally questionable activity now house mostly white young professionals and are characterized by real estate agents as “quaint” and “charming.” It is now fashionable for the professionals to live in these small houses. They cost considerably less to buy than the large houses, many of which have been subdivided into apartments or converted into offices for foundations or professional groups. The new occupants often spend considerable amounts on elegant interior decoration, sometimes making substantial structural changes as well.
South Street has changed greatly since DuBois's time but would be faintly recognizable to him today. At the heart of the western end is Graduate Hospital, which has recently built a new facility and continues to expand, spurring gentrification in the neighborhood. There are businesses catering to neighborhood residents, such as dry cleaners, pizzerias, and grocery stores, as well as refurbished homes or new houses built on the sites of demolished structures. There are also stretches of abandoned buildings awaiting demolition and empty lots awaiting rebuilding, especially between Twelfth and Sixteenth Streets. But this section also includes vestiges of its previous life, such as a former jazz bar and a former bank building already in use in DuBois's day and recently converted into an arts center.
The eastern end of South Street has become a business strip, including two chain drugstores and a supermarket between Ninth and Eleventh Streets. From about Sixth Street east to the Delaware River, South Street takes on a unique flavor as a bright lights district. At times, particularly on summer nights, a carnival atmosphere prevails. An astounding diversity of people—whites, blacks, Asians, gays, the conventional, and the openly nonconformist—can be seen walking up and down the street and patronizing stores. A wide assortment of eating and drinking establishments remain open late into the evening. There are gift shops; clothing stores offering a variety of styles, particularly punk; furniture stores; a large record store; jewelry stores; cheap restaurants and expensive restaurants; nightclubs; and some holdovers from days when the area was more residential, such as a store selling bedding. People, particularly young people, come here from all over, from the adjoining gentrified Society Hill neighborhood, from other parts of the city, from the suburbs. However, reminiscent of the area's earlier history, as the night wears on, trouble sometimes breaks out.
By contrast, Lombard Street has retained its essentially residential character, although the residents have changed. Many of the buildings have been extensively refurbished. They are obviously well-maintained, often with security bars on the ground-floor windows. At the same time, the streets are considerably emptier than they were in DuBois's day. The current residents remain indoors or in their small backyards when at home, conspicuously unlike the population DuBois found loitering, talking, playing cards, and generally carrying on an active social life on the streets. Some of the changes along Lombard Street are the result of technology. Buses, traffic lights, and service stations were certainly not around in DuBois's day, nor was the 24-hour convenience store.
No longer is this area the center of the black population, but reminders of the black past are in evidence. In particular, four black churches, including Mother Bethel African Methodist itself (the mother church founded by Richard Allen), remain on the street, drawing their congregations from other parts of the Philadelphia area. One may gain insight into the social forces that have buffeted the neighborhood by observing the activity at the recreation area at Sixth and Lombard Streets, in the shadow of Mother Bethel. While the area immediately surrounding it has undergone gentrification and is now home mainly to professionals, the recreation area itself brings in outsiders. Often whites (teenagers to young adults) can be observed playing softball on the field while blacks play on the basketball court. The two groups tend not to mix. Young whites play basketball, too, but if too many blacks arrive, they tend to leave. The scene thus provides a small vignette of “invasion-succession.”28
In another contrast with South Street, on Lombard Street a fair number of the buildings DuBois would have visited are still standing, and much of the new construction imitates the old, although modern styles are scattered throughout. Architecturally, both South and Lombard look somewhat the way they looked a hundred years ago. It's the social scene that is different. And the most striking difference is the lack of a black residential presence. The vibrant black community DuBois studied has moved completely away. The old Seventh Ward today includes, in addition to young—and older—professionals, students from the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and other schools. While one does see black people here, they appear most often to be passing through; this neighborhood is not usually their destination.
What then has become of the “Philadelphia Negro”? The first thing to note is that any present-day study of the so-called Philadelphia Negro would encompass more than just one section of the city. Since DuBois's day, the black community has grown greatly and has dispersed widely throughout the modern Philadelphia metropolitan area. In 1890, the black population of the city of Philadelphia stood at only 39,371 (3.8 percent of the total population of 1,046,964); as of the 1990 Census, the black community numbered 631,936 (39.9 percent of the total population of 1,585,577). Heavy concentrations of the black population can now be found in West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, and Southwest Philadelphia, but also in Germantown and Mount Airy. With the two world wars, Philadelphia's black community grew by leaps and bounds. After leaving the South, blacks arrived in Philadelphia and obtained jobs in various manufacturing industries, though many were still “the last hired and the first fired” on account of race. At first, black residents did cluster in certain ghetto areas, including the old Seventh Ward, partly because they felt comfortable in such places, but also because their presence was strongly resisted elsewhere.
In the 1950s, the Civil Rights movement began in earnest, and it certainly did not escape Philadelphia. Philadelphia experienced demonstrations and riots in some of the most concentrated