Elliott Rudwick lecture, "DuBois As Sociologist," at the University of Iowa, June-July 1972
Speaker 1: The following is an address recorded at the fourth annual Institute for Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa, June 25th through July 7th, 1972. Speaking on Du Bois as sociologist is Dr. Elliott Rudwick, Professor of History and Sociology at Kent State University. Introducing Dr. Rudwick is Charles T. Davis, Professor of English at the University of Iowa and Chairman of the Institute.
Charles T. Davi...: Mr. Rudwick is that rare phenomenon, a historian and a sociologist. Though I understand from friends of mine that there are others like Mr. Rudwick, I have encountered such a phenomenon only once before in a scholar of great distinction, and that of course is Thomas Cochran, who applied to intellectual and economic history the methodology that came from sociology. Since Cochran now is teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, I am tempted to say that the model of his scholarship must have had some effect upon Elliot Rudwick who has his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
Charles T. Davi...: Mr. Rudwick is now Professor of History and Sociology at Kent State university. In a very distinguished way, he has applied the methodologies of his two disciplines to the Black experience. He's the author of Race Riots at East St. Louis, July 2nd, 1917. Now, this is a title that has for us, of course, a familiar ring because we have read Dark Water, and it makes us speculate that the model for Mr. Rudwick's scholarly achievement is not so much Tom Cochran, but Du Bois himself. Because as you recall, of [inaydible], in Dark Water is an essay that attempts to use the facts of class and caste differences, and the facts of crisis economics to account for the disaster that occurred in East St. Louis. Perhaps I should say the human tragedy that still is East St. Louis.
Charles T. Davi...: Other works by Mr. Rudwick are W. E. B. Du Bois Propagandist for the Negro Protest and From Plantation to Ghetto, this last, a cooperative effort with another distinguished member of the faculty of the Institute, August Meier. I should add to Negro Protest Thought in America, a volume done in association with not only August Meier, but John Bracey, yet another of our faculty participants. We have learned much from what Mr. Rudwick has done, and we wait with some impatience for what is shortly to appear. The nearly completed Study of Core, a cooperative venture with August Meier, and his studies of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Charles T. Davi...: A great gap in our understanding of Black life in America, the role played by Black institutions will begin to close then. And I hope too as I'm sure Mr. Rudwick does as well, that Jesse Moore's dissertation on the national urban league will be published soon, which will also help to close that gap. I know of no one better equipped to discuss this aspect of Du Bois' his genius, that aspect that is sociology. The perspective of history is required, I think, to measure adequately Du Bois' contribution in this field. And I'm delighted to present Mr. Rudwick who will lecture on Du Bois as sociologists.
Elliott Rudwick: I'm going to talk this afternoon about Du Bois as a sociologist. W. E. B. Du Bois is best known as the most important propagandist of the Negro protest during the first half of the 20th century largely because he was a principal founder of the NAACP and for almost a quarter of a century, the editor of the association's official publication, The Crisis. That he was a sociologist was all but forgotten except by a very few. Yet from the time he received his PhD from Harvard in 1895, until shortly before World War I, Du Bois was responsible for some impressive pioneering research on Black Americans. In both his training and the quality of his published scholarship, Du Bois compares favorably with other sociologists of the time. But the racial prejudices of the early leaders of the profession caused his work to be all but ignored.
Elliott Rudwick: At the turn of the century, the discipline of sociology was just emerging as an academic specialty out of a more generalized field of social science that included political economy, government, the study of social problems and even history.
Elliott Rudwick: The first formal department of sociology was not organized until 1892 at the University of Chicago. At the time, sociology, economics, the study of social problems and the field of social ethics were closely intertwined and often not sharply distinguished. Among many scholars, there was a strong interest in using social science knowledge to improve human society. Clearly much of the work was imbued with a reformist spirit, more akin to the study of social ethics and social work than to scientific sociology.
Elliott Rudwick: Reflecting this faith of an important segment of American social scientists, that knowledge would lead to the solution of social problems, Du Bois during the early years of his career, passionately believed that research could supply the basis for achieving a racially equalitarian society. He contended that racial prejudice was caused by ignorance and that social science could provide the knowledge to defeat injustice. Though sociology was not recognized as a separate discipline at Harvard at the time that Du Bois studied there and Du Bois took his PhD in history, he also earned many credits in the social sciences and recalled later that his course of study would have been called sociology.
Elliott Rudwick: From his adviser, the historian Albert Bushnell Hart, Du Bois imbibed an emphasis on careful empirical research. He largely credited his mentor with having quotes, turned me back from the lovely but sterile land of philosophic speculation to the social sciences as the field for gathering and interpreting that body of fact, which would apply to my program for advancing the Negro.
Elliott Rudwick: In 1892 in the middle of graduate work at Harvard, Du Bois went to the University of Berlin for a more concentrated program in the social sciences. There, he studied under Gustav Schmoller, who stressed the value of a hard-nosed empiricism and the faith that a systematic body of knowledge could be used to shape national policy. With his zeal for collecting facts, Du Bois had only impatience with the armchair generalizing of such social theorists as Spencer or Giddings. He commented, I could not low my mind to hypnosis by regarding the phrase like consciousness of kind as a scientific law. I determine to put science into sociology through a study of the condition and problems of my own group. I was going to study the facts, any and all facts, concerning the American Negro and his plight, and by measurement and comparison and research work up to any valid generalization, which I could.
Elliott Rudwick: The opportunity that Du Bois dreamed of came in 1896 when reformers in the Philadelphia settlement house movement invited him to analyze Black participation in local politics and other social institutions. Familiar with Charles Booth's life and labor of the people of London, Du Bois believed that a painstaking study of Philadelphia's Negroes could serve as a guideline to improve their social conditions.
Elliott Rudwick: In The Philadelphia Negro published in 1899, which Gunnar Myrdal in his An American Dilemma described as a model of what a study of a Negro community should be, Du Bois enthusiastically played his dual role of social scientist and social reformer. Philadelphia in the mid 1890s had over 45,000 Blacks, the largest Negro concentration of any city in the entire North. For over a year, Du Bois was a participant observer in the seventh ward, the historic center of Negro settlement in the city, where about one fifth of the community's Blacks live.
Elliott Rudwick: His study area was appropriate because it was the chief locus of Black community institutions such as the church. And as Du Bois put it all social classes with their varying conditions of life were represented there. Using a lengthy questionnaire, he did a house to house survey of all the Black families in the ward and compiled voluminous data on such matters as patterns of migration into and within the city, family structure, income, occupations, property holding, social stratification, Black community institutions, politics and pauperism.
Elliott Rudwick: On the one hand, the results added up to a dismal portrait of unemployment, job discrimination practice by both employers and trade unions, wretched housing, family breakdown, substantial criminality and widespread health and hygienic problems. On the other hand, Du Bois' monograph was a brilliant description of the contours and functioning of the Black community and its institutions, and the mechanisms that had developed for racial survival and advancements.
Elliott Rudwick: His interviews revealed that three fourths of the Black working class males and females of the seventh ward were laborers and servants. Especially striking was the color bar in Philadelphia's many manufacturing plants. Less than a 10th of the Blacks had factory jobs. On the other hand, about one fourth of the males were employed in skilled trades, the professions and small businessmen, thus providing the economic base for what Du Bois termed the city's small Black "aristocracy". Yet even the most successful Black intrepreneurs, the barbers and caterers labored under serious difficulties. Barbering had once been an almost exclusively Negro calling, but by the end of the century, competition from white immigrants was driving Blacks out of the lucrative white market.
Elliott Rudwick: The Black man's economic plight was of course reflected in various social problems, such as illiteracy, pauperism, crime and family disorganization. The Philadelphia Negro includes stringent descriptions of the overcrowded squalor in which the city's Black poor were forced to live and an extensive discussion of how such poverty exacerbated by the new influx of many penniless and illiterate southerners, and by the serious economic depression of the 1890s, accounted for Black criminality.
Elliott Rudwick: More important in terms of long range interests of sociologists, however, was his pioneering examination of Black family life. Du Bois described the direct connection between economic status and family structure. He contrasted the conventional middle class family life of the "well-to-do", a group that Frazier later termed, the Black Puritans, with the temporary cohabitation and common law marriages among the very poor.
Elliott Rudwick: He was the first sociologist to point up the disproportionately large number of female headed households among the Black poor. The situation he explained resulted partly from the heritage of slavery and even more from harsh economic realities in the cities. The role of the Negro woman as breadwinner, both when the husband was absent and when he was present was revealed in the statistics, where 16% of the native white women were employed, 43% of the Black females were breadwinners. Thus even among the great mass of the Negro population characterized by households headed by men with regular employment, their minimal income combined with the relatively high rents they were required to pay, often involved serious problems.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois identified three factors responsible for this "pressing series of social problems", the slavery experience, which left so many of its victims untrained, uneducated and impoverished, the enduring prejudice of white Americans and the influx of migrants from the South. Though The Philadelphia Negro was written in scholarly tones and in an era of widespread accommodation to white supremacy, Du Bois' indictment of white prejudice was unmistakable. He stressed that Blacks lived in a different environment from whites. That the basis of the difference was "the widespread feeling all over the land in Philadelphia as well as in Boston and New Orleans that the Negro was something less than an American and ought not to be much more than what he is".
Elliott Rudwick: He found discrimination pervasive, but devoted his attention particularly to the barriers that stood in the way of the Negros economic development. He noted that regardless of ability, a Black man did not have the same opportunity to work as a white man. In his emphasis upon the importance of migration, Du Bois prefigured a later subject of interest to sociologists studying Black urban communities. The great migration started nearly two decades after Du Bois did the research for The Philadelphia Negro. Yet throughout his book, he displayed a keen awareness of the significance of the movement of Southern Blacks to the cities in shaping the context of urban Negro life.
Elliott Rudwick: Like Charles Johnson, Franklin Frazier and others later, he stressed that behind the migration was the desire to escape from oppression in the South. He reported that most of the Blacks in the seventh ward were migrants to the city, the majority having arrived during the previous decade. These young, impoverished, often illiterate southerners settled "in pretty well defined localities in or near the slums and thus get the worst possible introduction to city life".
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois' generalizations about the social problems he described later became standard in sociology. But at the time that The Philadelphia Negro was written, they stood in marked contrast to the racist assumptions held by most sociologists and the general public alike. For Du Bois rejected explanations based on biological differences or inherent inferiority, and emphasized instead the critical importance of historical and environmental factors. In setting forth his method of studying Black Philadelphians, Du Bois stated that the student of the social problems affecting ethnic minorities must go beyond the group itself, and "must specifically notice the environment, the physical environment of city, sections and houses, the far mightier social environment, the surrounding world of custom wish, whim and thought which envelops this group and powerfully influences its social development".
Elliott Rudwick: But The Philadelphia Negro would scarcely be an important contribution to sociology if it had been confined to a description of social problems and a discussion of their causes. What makes this book live is the fact that it is a well rounded study of a local Black community and was thus a forerunner of the holistic community case studies that culminated in 1945 with Drake and Cayton's Black Metropolis.
Elliott Rudwick: Especially important was Du Bois' emphasis upon the complexity and variety in the Black community, most notably in the differentiation between the social classes and their varying lifestyles. Partly this was directed at countering white stereotypes of Blacks as a homogeneous, poor and criminal group. More important, the discussion of social class was functional to the understanding of the Black community. Finally, Du Bois' class analysis was at the heart of his proposals for race advancement.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois' analysis of social stratification in Philadelphia's Negro community reflected the moral standards of the social reformers of that period. While his conceptualization was not as refined as that employed by social scientists today, nevertheless like them, he used a combination of criteria that included income, occupation and lifestyle. He described four general social grades or classes. At the top, comprising about one tenth of the population was an upper class or "aristocracy", composed of "families of undoubted respectability earning sufficient income to live well, not engaged in menial service of any kind. The wife engaged in no occupation save that of housewife. The children not compelled to be breadwinners, but found in schools. The family living in a well-kept home.
Elliott Rudwick: Consisting primarily of entrepreneurs and professional people. They were largely Philadelphia born, descended often from house servants, included many mulattoes, and were the class most assimilated to American middle-class culture. Characterized by conspicuous consumption. They usually felt compelled as the elite of the race to spend more than their white neighbors on clothes and entertainment." There you see a prefiguring of the Black bourgeoisie thesis of Frazier.
Elliott Rudwick: The next group was "the respectable working glass in comfortable circumstances with a good home, having steady remunerative work". The younger children in school. Composing about half of the population, this group consisted of the mass of the serving class, the porters and waiters, and "best of the laborers". Ambitious and anxious to rise in the world, they were hardworking and beginning to accumulate property. While they usually had lodgers and their wages were low compared to whites, they had neatly furnished homes.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois noted, the best expression of the life of this group is the Negro church where their social life centers. Their greatest trouble was in finding suitable careers for their children. The lack of congenial occupation, especially among the young produced widespread disappointment and discouragement.
Elliott Rudwick: Below this class of strivers came the poor persons not earning enough to keep them at all times above want. "Honest, although not always energetic or thrifty, and with no touch of gross immorality or crime." About a third of the population, they consisted of the poor and unfortunate and the casual laborers." Many lived in slums or on back streets. They include "immigrants who cannot get steady work, unreliable and shiftless persons who cannot keep work or spend their earnings thoughtfully, those who have suffered accident and misfortune, many widows and orphans and deserted wives".
Elliott Rudwick: At the bottom of Du Bois' classification stood a class with criminal records composed of about 6% who loomed large in the eyes of white Philadelphians. As in Drake and Cayton's Black Metropolis nearly half a century later, and other works of the W. Lloyd Warner School of Social Anthropology, the theme of social class was used in The Philadelphia Negro as an integrating device, although Du Bois did not do this as explicitly as later scholars. In The Philadelphia Negro, occupation, property holding, literacy and income on the one hand, and style of family life on the other are as already observed all related to social class.
Elliott Rudwick: Similarly, the discussion of the institutional structure of the Black community, notably the church was also clearly integrated with the class structure. The well to do mostly attended either St. Thomas Episcopal Church, which represented the most educated and economically secure of the Black Philadelphians, or the Central Presbyterian Church attended by the older "simpler set of respectable Philadelphians". Their style of worship was formal and reserved. The aristocracy Du Bois reported shrink from the free and easy worship of most of the Negro churches. The great mass of the working class people attended the large African Methodist Episcopal and Baptist Churches. Thus at Mother Bethel AME Church, one found "the best of the great laboring class, steady honest people, while at Union Baptist Church, one may look for the Virginia servant girls and their young men". The very poor were largely unchurched, but some tended to fill "a host of noisy missions", as Du Bois observed.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois emphasized that the church performed a number of important social functions, some of which were latent that served as an integrative force in the Black community. Philadelphia Negro churches were the center of social life to a degree unknown in white churches. And they also offered opportunities for status recognition and office that made them "almost political."
Elliott Rudwick: Their forums, lyceums and musical events were important in the cultural life of the community. Their publishing houses and newspapers gave them a significant place in the Black economy of the city and finally, all movement for social betterment tended to center in the churches. Numerous beneficial societies, building and loan associations and secret societies were organized there. Ministers frequently served as employment agents and considerable charitable work was conducted there.
Elliott Rudwick: Another important contribution which Du Bois made in the Philadelphia Negro was his implicitly functional analysis of Black participation in city politics. At the time, Philadelphia was a notoriously corrupt city dominated by a powerful Republican machine. And in Du Bois' words, most Blacks were its willing tools. While personally critical of the venality of the machine, he attempted to show the functions it performed for Blacks. In fact, Du Bois made the point that the Republican machine functioned for Blacks as the democratic party did for their chief competitors in the labor market, the Irish. On a very practical level, what the machine did was to offer protection for those engaged in vice and minor crime and for a larger body of non-criminal migrants who were harassed by the police. Clubhouses for the poor and political patronage that included not only janitorial jobs, but the few white collar positions Negros held in the city government.
Elliott Rudwick: City hall, dispensing token jobs as school teachers, policemen and clerks was nonetheless the largest employer of Blacks in non menial positions in Philadelphia. Given the highly limited economic opportunities for Blacks, such jobs were extremely important, and were ordinarily filled by well-qualified Blacks of high ability and education. Du Bois also presented the earliest analysis of the relationship of turn of the century municipal "good government movements" to the Negro population in an illuminating discussion, which he called the paradox of reform. The reform movement condemned the corrupt machine's relationships with poor immigrants and Blacks, but failed to recognize the important functions that the machine performed for the minority communities.
Elliott Rudwick: A few economically secure Negroes did support the reformers, but as Du Bois perceived, the victory for the reformers was likely to be dysfunctional for Blacks depriving them of the few benefits they received from political participation.
Elliott Rudwick: As the proceeding discussion indicates, the Philadelphia Negro was a conscientious and perceptive sociological study, but the research was undertaken to do something besides description and analysis. In the final section of the monograph, Du Bois, the analyst and fact gatherer, became the social reformer recommending solutions to the problems he had highlighted. He criticized whites for offering platitudes and sermons rather than providing jobs and extensive financial aid for racial advancement. The whites had a major responsibility to eliminate discrimination, which Du Bois called quotes "morally wrong, politically dangerous, industrially wasteful, and socially silly. It is the duty of the whites to stop it." What was needed was a radical change in public opinion to permit Blacks equal opportunity to forge ahead.
Elliott Rudwick: On the other hand, Du Bois insisted that much of the responsibility for the racist advancement lay with Blacks themselves. Blacks had the right to demand freedom for self development and substantial aid from whites for schools, relief and preventive agencies. But he said, "The bulk of the raising of the Negro must be done by the Negro himself against prejudice, injustice, and wrong. The Negro ought to protest energetically and continuously, but he must never forget that he protests because those things hinder his own efforts and that those efforts are the key to his future."
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois believed that this key to the future lay in the development of the cooperative economic and social endeavor, which he had described earlier. In the realm of economics, while advancement must come very largely from a change in white attitudes and behavior, cooperation among Philadelphia's Blacks would provide many job opportunities in Negro owned establishments.
Elliott Rudwick: "The hope of Blacks was in the mastery of the art of social organized life", said Du Bois. In this task of pushing the race forward, the Black aristocracy would play the crucial role, but it was the duty of whites to support the efforts of this Black elite. In a prefiguring of E. Franklin Frazier's Black bourgeoisie, Du Bois unhappily reported that within the Black upper class, there was considerable alienation from the masses and they pronounced tendency to remain aloof. He insisted that the Black upper class had a, "Duty toward the masses. They should establish, for example, more social services, such as day nurseries and sewing schools. They should develop more building and loan associations, newspapers, labor unions, and industrial enterprises." In short, foreshadowing his famous theory of the talented 10th, Du Bois preached and etiology of Negro self-help and solidarity, a program of racial self elevation under the leadership of an educated Black elite.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois conceived of the Philadelphia Negro as the start of a larger research program. In 1898, addressing the American Academy of Political and Social Science, he urged support for his ideas about an extensive program of research among Blacks. Both from the standpoint of pure science and practical social need, Du Bois argued that the study of more than 8 million Americans of African descent should be a matter of the highest priority. Unfortunately, the research thus far done had been "lamentably unsystematic and fragmentary, and most unfortunate of all, suffered from superficiality and racial bias." He maintained that because Negroes were readily identifiable and segregated, they provided especially valuable subjects for historical anthropological and sociological inquiry that would contribute substantially to the advancement of human knowledge. At the same time, the scientific knowledge was a prerequisite to social understanding and the solution of social problems.
Elliott Rudwick: Accordingly, he proposed an ambitious research plan calling for the endowment of a Negro college as a center of sociological research in close connection and cooperation with Harvard Columbia, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania.
Elliott Rudwick: There was no interest in his 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 in 1897. There, building on a modest research program already inaugurated, Du Bois unveiled a grandiose 100-year plan for a comprehensive investigation of various aspects of Black community life, such as Negro business, education, the church, welfare organizations, family life, and criminality.
Elliott Rudwick: He envisioned a 10-year cycle in which data on each topic were to be published every decade. During the 10-year period, such research projects were to be continued simultaneously and after a century so much would be known about Negro life as to be of inestimable benefit to the entire society. As he explained, the method employed is to divide the various aspects of the Black American social condition into 10 great subjects. To treat one of these subjects each year as carefully and exhaustively as means will allow until the cycle is completed. To begin then again on the same cycle for a second 10 years so that in the course of a century, if the work is well done, we should have a continuous record on the condition and development of a group of 10 to 20 millions of men, a body of sociological material unsurpassed in human annals.
Elliott Rudwick: In presenting the rationale for this program, Du Bois used arguments similar to those used at the American Academy of political and social science. The task before sociology was to move from broad obstructions and unsystematic fact gathering that "have neither permanently increased the amount of our own knowledge nor introduced in the maze of fact, any illuminating system or satisfy interpretation to the minute study of limited fields of human action, where observation and accurate measurement are possible and where real illuminating knowledge can be had. The careful exhaustive study of the isolated group then, is ideal of the sociologist of the 20th century from that may come at last careful, cautious, generalization and formulation."
Elliott Rudwick: For such work, a study of American Blacks provided "a peculiar opportunity." Never in the history of the modern world has there been presented so rare an opportunity to observe and measure and study the evolution of a great branch of the human race as is given to Americans in the study of the American Negro. "Here is a crucial test", continued Du Bois, "On a scale that is astounding and under circumstances, peculiarly fortunate. By reason of color and color prejudice, the group is isolated. By reason of incentive to change, the changes are rapid and kaleidoscopic. By reason of the peculiar environment, the action and reaction of social forces are seen and can be measured with more than usual ease."
Elliott Rudwick: Denouncing the racist bias of contemporaries, he called for a dispassionate scientific attitude. "We urge and invite all men of science into the field, but we plead for men of science, not for men with theories to sustain or with prejudices to strengthen. We sincerely regret that there has been a tendency for so many men without adequate scientific knowledge and without conscientious study to pronounce public opinions and put gratuitous slurs on me and my people, which were as insulting to us as they were to their own scientific reputations."
Elliott Rudwick: Considering that Atlanta university was a struggling and impoverished institution that could not afford to support Du Bois' research adequately for one year, much less for a decade or a century, it is a tribute to his determination that he actually supervised the preparation of 16 Atlanta university sociological monographs between 1897 and 1914. Obliged to use only unpaid investigators on a part time basis, Du Bois was limited in the breadth and extensiveness of the project selected for study. He has described the method he was forced to use. Work in sociology was inaugurated with a thought that a university is primarily a seat of learning and that Atlanta university, being in the midst of the Negro problems ought to become a center of such a systematic and thorough going study of those problems. It goes without saying that our ideals in this respect are far from being realized, although our searches have cost less than $500 a year. Yet we find it difficult and sometimes impossible to raise that meager sum. We lack proper appliances for statistical work and proper clerical aide.
Elliott Rudwick: Notwithstanding this, something has been done. The plan of work is this, a subject is chosen. It's always a definite limit subject covering some phase of the general Negro problem. Schedules are then prepared and these, with letters, are sent to the voluntary correspondence, mostly graduates of this and other Negro institutions of higher learning. They, by means of local inquiry, fill out and return the schedules. Then other sources of information, depending on the question under discussion, are tried until after six or eight months' work, a body of material is gathered.
Elliott Rudwick: Not surprisingly, in view of the limited resources at his disposal, the Atlanta monographs do not compare with the Philadelphia Negro as a contribution to sociology. They were uneven in quality, planning, methods and content. At the less successful end of the spectrum, where some efforts of Negroes for their own social betterment first completed in 1898 and repeated in 1909 and economic cooperation among Negro Americans produced in 1907 and dealing partly with the same kind of material found in these other two monographs. In attempting to examine the charitable work of churches' secret societies and other organizations that Blacks were establishing for themselves, Du Bois in 1898, selected several Southern cities and the college graduates who collected the data or asked to record typical examples.
Elliott Rudwick: Although he was fortunate to obtain the services of these interviewers, he gave few instructions beyond telling them to submit limited descriptions of some benevolent organizations within their own communities. As Du Bois well-recognized, he could not check the reliability or validity of the material sent to him. He succeeded in a massing and encyclopedic array of facts, often with little connection to each other and he simply added them up where he could. There's list after list of services and societies with little or no interpretation, except to indicate the possibilities of what could be accomplished through greater collective action. The local church questionnaire, for example, included such items as the following: number of enrolled members, number of active members, value of real estate indebtedness, number of religious meetings weekly, entertainments per year, lectures, literary programs per year, suppers and socials per year, concerts and fairs per year, and so on.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois considered his presentation was a significant scientific contribution, which demonstrated that Negroes were not "one vast unorganized homogeneous mass." However, race prejudice had isolated the group and caused the accelerated formation of racial institutions for which no adequate preparation had been made. He believed that more inquiries such as this one would provide the answer to the extent of white aide, which the race required. This Atlanta monograph and all the others as well, offer Du Bois considerable opportunity to play the role of social reformer. At the conclusion of each year's project, he and Atlanta university hosted a conference that brought educated Negros and a sprinkling of sympathetic whites to the campus for a discussion of the relevance of the research topic to the future advancement of the race.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois usually served on the resolutions' committee of these annual conclaves and was an influential figure in composing the exhortations and admonitions about ways to improve living conditions among Blacks. The resolutions, which were printed in the annual monographs generally did not grow out of the inductive studies and typically failed to suggest specific techniques to accomplish the end sought. Thus, in 1898, Du Bois' resolutions committee urged Black churches to cut their operating expenses and use the money for more charitable work. Funerals were criticized as too extravagant and Blacks were urged to have burials that were simple, inexpensive and without tawdry display.
Elliott Rudwick: Similarly, the Black secret societies were told to "be careful not to give undue prominence to ritual, regalia and parade. Obviously in this instance, Du Bois and his fellow councilors of austerity failed to appreciate the integrity and status functions of costly rituals. In this, of course, they were thoroughly imbued with the Puritan ethic of reform that characterized much of sociology in the progressive era.
Elliott Rudwick: The 1907 monograph economic cooperation among Negro Americans was supposed to be a continuation and enlargement of the 1898 account. In his treatment of the Black church in 1907, he did not utilize the 1898 material on individual churches. He discussed the income expenses, mission work, and many other details of the larger religious denominations. In this later study, he made no reference to his handling of the beneficial and insurance societies in 1898. The 1898 monograph had contained a catalog of various local secret societies, giving the usual data on membership income and expenses. The 1907 volume included the history and purposes of some of the larger societies, such as the masons. The two treatments were not related to each other.
Elliott Rudwick: The 1898 monograph had mentioned several examples of cooperative businesses and a few were described in some detail. One of these, a North Carolina cooperative, a North Carolina cotton mill called the Coleman Manufacturing Company was also discussed in the 1907 volume, but there was no connection made between these two examinations of the same company. Nothing was said about its development of the intervening nine years. In one line, Du Bois mentioned that the Black founder had died and a white company bought the mill and is running it with white help. Here was an opportunity for a case study of how a race enterprise failed if more data had been gathered and related.
Elliott Rudwick: Two years later in 1909, efforts for social betterment among Negro Americans was published and it too presented a cornucopia of facts with no connections drawn to the material given in the earlier volume.
Elliott Rudwick: The best monographs in the series were too dealing with the Negro artisan, 1902 and 1912. They signified a more thorough and ordered contribution to our knowledge of Black Americans. Du Bois recognized that he encountered a peculiar difficulty since much of his data came from interested persons. Although to some extent, part of the could be checked by third parties. For instance, in some cases, the word of the workers was validated by making inquiries of their fellow workers and their employers.
Elliott Rudwick: The 1902 research was based upon many sources. A questionnaire was disseminated to hundreds of Black artisans residing primarily in Georgia. These men described their work experiences in comparison with white artisans in the same occupations. Another schedule was sent to correspondence in many states, who surveyed skilled workers in their own communities. For example, one man described what trades Negros entered in Memphis, whether they belong to the same labor unions as whites. Unions affiliated with the American Federation of labor, and independent unions as well, received a questionnaire on the Black worker. Another was placed in the hands of the central labor bodies in a number of cities and state federations were also contacted.
Elliott Rudwick: Through these sources, Du Bois was able to provide a list of unions which admitted Negroes and the relative proportions of Blacks to the total membership of the unions. He could pinpoint the trades in which Negroes experienced hostility and he upended the views of labor leaders on race relations in industry. Comparative data were secured on the amount of wages paid to Blacks and whites in the various traits. In the 1912 survey, similar questionnaires were sent to some of the same groups and comparisons of census data for the two time periods were made in an effort to estimate whether Blacks were holding their own in the various traits.
Elliott Rudwick: Although the Atlanta studies clearly had their limitations, nevertheless, their value and importance should not be ignored. At a time when serious study of the Black community was otherwise absent, Du Bois amassed a body of data that not only compared quite favorably with the social survey research being done at the time, but has provided a valuable storehouse of information to those who have followed him.
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois himself modestly evaluated the significance of what he was doing when he wrote in 1908, "When we at Atlanta university say that we are the only institution in the United States that's making any serious study of the race problems, we make no great boasts because it is not that we are doing so much, but rather that the rest of the nation is doing nothing." In short, the real importance of the Atlanta university monographs lied in the fact that in them and in the Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois single-handedly initiated serious empirical research on Blacks in America.
Elliott Rudwick: Despite the depth of his commitment to sociology, Du Bois was in the main ignored by the elite in the profession. It is interesting to note that Albion W. Small, a founder of the Chicago Department of Sociology in 1892, of the American Journal of Sociology in 1895, and of the American Sociological Society a decade later in 1905, had like Du Bois been trained in Germany by Schmoller. Nevertheless, in spite of this similarity and professional background, and although the American Journal of Sociology, in addition to publishing theoretical articles, devoted many pages to social welfare problems, Du Bois' work was clearly considered of minor importance. Except for reasons of racial prejudice, it is difficult to account for his being shunted aside.
Elliott Rudwick: The monumental Philadelphia Negro was totally ignored by the journal. Yet, books by known racists were reviewed and often warmly praised. Nor did the American Journal of Sociology publish a single one of Du Bois has many articles, though, on one occasion, the journal included his remarks at a 1908 symposium entitled Is Race Friction Between Blacks and Whites in the United States Growing and Inevitable? in which he restated his "dream that we could begin at a small Negro college, a movement for the scientific study of race differences and likenesses, which should, in time, revolutionize the knowledge of the world."
Elliott Rudwick: This policy of the journal reflected views about race current in the profession at the time. As E. Franklin Frazier has described the situation, the general point of view of the first sociologists who directed their attention to the Black men, was that "the Negro was an inferior race because of either a biological or social heredity or both, that the Negro because of his physical characteristics could not be assimilated, and that physical amalgamation was bad and therefore undesirable." In short, as Frazier said, the sociological theories, which were implicit in the writings on the Negro problem, were merely rationalizations of the existing racial situation. Thus, ironically, Du Bois, who by training and research orientation toward both empiricism and reform, was part of the mainstream of American sociology as the discipline was evolving at the turn of the century, found himself relegated to the periphery of his profession. Nor did the university of Chicago School of Urban Sociology, that began about the time of the First World War, consider Du Bois' work significant, even though its leader, Robert E. Park was deeply interested in the study of race relations.
Elliott Rudwick: It had been the Social Survey Movement, which sensitized sociologists to the importance of studying the urban community and urban problems. And indeed, Park and his colleagues recognized the value of Booth's internationally famous research on London, recognized the value of Chicago's whole house maps and papers, and the noted Pittsburgh survey of 1909 to 1912. Yet, both they, and almost every commentator since, while mentioning the studies along with case studies of other communities, failed to include the Philadelphia Negro. Among those who have written the counts of the origins of modern sociology and social research, only Professor Nathan Glazer appears to have recognized the Philadelphia Negro's contribution. This neglect of Du Bois' work appears all the more remarkable when comparisons are made with other products of the Social Survey Movement. The Philadelphia Negro was, in fact, one of the finest monographs inspired by Booth's study of London. It was actually superior to Chicago's whole house maps and papers, and it antedated by a whole decade the elaborate and influential Pittsburgh survey.
Elliott Rudwick: But in the United States of the early 20th century, white sociologists were not likely to recognize the contribution a study of a Black community could make to sociology. Yet, times would change, the American Journal of Sociology would soon be publishing many serious articles on the Negro, and under Robert E. Parks leadership, the University of Chicago's Sociology Department became a major center for the study of race relations in America. Blacks like Charles S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier became students in sociology at Chicago and began producing work that owed much to the influence of Du Bois.
Elliott Rudwick: But by then, Du Bois had ceased to think of himself primarily as a sociologist. Almost completely in vain, he had made public appeals for money to finance the annual Atlanta University studies. He had become less sure that social science could seriously affect social reform. Increasingly, he turned his attention to writing propaganda pieces that aggressively and unconditionally demanded the same civil rights for Blacks that other Americans enjoyed, a theme absent from the Atlanta studies. In 1909, he became one of the founders of the NAACP, and the following year, he left Atlanta University to accept employment with the new civil rights organization.
Elliott Rudwick: Although Du Bois himself thus left the field of sociology, his influence on students of the Black community was profound, for his was not only the obvious model for the surveys of Negros in New York and Boston done by Ovington, Haynes and Daniels in the period before the First World War, but his pioneering work also bears important similarities to such laser studies as Charles Johnson's The Negro in Chicago, Du Bois'... Frazier's, rather, Negro Youth at the Crossroads, Davis and Gardener's Deep South, and Drake and Cayton's Black Metropolis. In their holistic approach to the study of Black urban communities, in their attention to the importance of social class, and in their pain, staking scholarship and quest for scientific knowledge, their likeness to Du Bois is clearly evident. And like Du Bois, they clearly showed the social problems arising from white oppression and discrimination, and at the same time, described the richness and diversity of Black life and the inventiveness which Negros displayed in creating institutions and lifestyles that enabled them to cope and survive.
Elliott Rudwick: Finally, like Du Bois, they all hoped that their research and published works by reaching an influential white audience would promote beneficial changes for Blacks in American society.
Charles T. Davi...: I'm sure that we can put questions now [inaudible]. I have one. I usually start. And I'm interested, you've indicated, I think very well, the kind of continuity that sociologists have not really accepted existing between the Philadelphia Negro and these latest studies. And my question, really, is a simple one, what are the differences separating the Philadelphia Negro from, say, Deep South, of Alison Davis and Burleigh Gardner, and Black Metropolis? What are the methodological differences that you see separate these works?
Elliott Rudwick: I think that there's a greater sophistication in the kinds of social research techniques as developed through the Warner School, but both are holistic studies. The incredible thing is that Du Bois interviewed several thousand Blacks by himself and this one ward back in the 1890s, when sociology was largely an armchair generalizing kind of field.
Charles T. Davi...: One of the differences that the people in the Warner School like to point out is the fact that they evolved a wholly different kind of interview, a kind of depth interview which revealed information about personality that Du Bois apparently was not interested in.
Elliott Rudwick: Another difference is this one, I would mention, that in Du Bois, you get a strong normative aspect in Du Bois' Philadelphia Negro and in the resolutions of the committee each year in the Atlanta study. There is someone who's saying, now, "Here are my recommendations. This ought to be done in terms of certain values that I have," and so on. However, sociology moved to a neutral thrust in the subsequent decades so that you don't, for example, see in the Negro family study of E. Franklin Frazier, a normative kind of approach, that is with certain recommendations that I think there are implicit. But you do not see the explicit recommendations. I think that, in part, this reflects the influence of Park, because Park takes the view, "Stand back and observe." In effect, give the facts, do not make the recommendations. If your facts are strong, people will be influenced by this.
Elliott Rudwick: Now, this, to many young sociologists today, this is a very reactionary kind of view. You should be involved, blah, blah, blah. Park, however, was reacting to what? To a sociological thrust which said that Blacks were inferior. In other words, they were making a thrust that was making normative judgements of another [inaudible]. So, he said, "Stand back and do not recommend, just let the fact...." In effect, his was a considered a radical view at that time. So, you do not then see in Frazier until, by the way of course, the polemic, the Black Bourgeoisie. And he really lets go, makes up for what he lost in the Black... in the Negro family and in the United States.
Speaker 5: [inaudible] as we mentioned [inaudible] center for the study [inaudible] I'm interested, since I found some contradictions in Du Bois' thinking and recommendation as related to what he recognized as political machinations in Philadelphia. I want to transfer that to Chicago's situation and ask who financed Chicago's becoming the center for [inaudible] of sociology?
Elliott Rudwick: Well, it became a major, perhaps for the time, the major department in the country. I would guess that their money would come, of course, from the Rockefellers. Their money would've come from the tuition and from any outside funds that Park and so on could scrounge. I don't know specifically where they got it. I would assume from... Yeah. In the case of the Philadelphia Negro, that study was financed through a group of upper class white Philadelphians led by Susan Wharton from a very famous family over there.
Charles T. Davi...: It's not entirely different from the way that [inaudible] Warner raised his money from fats cats who were able to support the research [inaudible].
Speaker 5: I think what I was looking for with some kind of tie to [inaudible] Carnegie [inaudible] the money to aristocracy. And I don't mean to push this off [inaudible] trying to [inaudible] in connecting economic considerations for [inaudible] Du Bois' work, the fact that he could not carry on his [inaudible] program. I mean, that is making his [inaudible] concerns known, and were concerned, too, that much of that probably to the financial strains that he was encountering. And rather than to go back and [inaudible] on the linear kind of situation to accumulate as much material as he can [inaudible].
Elliott Rudwick: Well, of course, you must remember that at his height at Atlanta University, he was known more as that Black radical attacking Booker T. Washington. Let alone be successful in getting money for his studies, he was lucky to keep his job, and Atlanta University breathed a sigh of relief when the NAACP invited him to New York to work and to found the crisis. Now, there is a connection between Robert E. Park and Booker T. Washington in that Professor Park, who by the way also had a German PhD, Professor Park began as a journalist and ended up before coming to Chicago, he ended up on the plantation of Booker T. Washington over at Tuskegee and for several years served as the secretary and a speech writer. Some people see him as the evil behind Booker T. Some people see it the other way, that Booker T. messed up Park and then he carried that into Chicago. So, it's kind of this guilt by association thing.
Elliott Rudwick: But in any event, Professor Park, whose interest in Blacks went way back to the turn of the century when he was active in something called the Belgian Congo Association, had spent years at Tuskegee and then went on up to Chicago. Unquestionably, men like E. Franklin Frazier and Charles S. Johnson had terrific admiration. Their private correspondence shows this. Frazier dedicated the Negro in the United States to two people, Robert E Park and W.E.B. Du Bois. He had a terrific affection. I recall interviewing Frazier for my thesis back in the early '50s, and he had, at the time when Dr. Du Bois was being tried for being an agent for a foreign principle, it was Frazier who signed the list of people who said, "Stop this. It's wrong," and so on. And the list was around the short one in academia, so far as academia.
Speaker 5: [inaudible].
Elliott Rudwick: I'm going to strangle myself if your question is as evil as I think it might be. I'm going to trip, too.
Speaker 5: You mentioned when you were talking about it, his study at Philadelphia, something that I find interesting, and that was the dysfunctional effect that reformers might have [inaudible]. Are there any connections between those kinds of increasing analyses on Du Bois' part of the organic function of the political machine as we see them as power and as Black [inaudible]?
Elliott Rudwick: I don't know of any connection there. I've not seen any. I would think not.
Speaker 5: I gathered from what you said, though, that he felt that they were reformers, if they were successful, he would have a very deleterious effect on the Black [inaudible].
Elliott Rudwick: Yes, because it would close off important teaching jobs. The Blacks would be denied through a "civil service procedure," which would not be honestly operative, is what he was saying, as well as other reasons. Yeah?
Speaker 6: You made two comments I'd like you to tie together for me. [inaudible] carefully avoiding, or he said that Du Bois' work was ignored by [inaudible] and so forth and yet later you said that it served as a model for some other [inaudible]. I wondered, was that a direct, was there some direct personal or other connections, or were you arguing in terms of similarity? You said similarity a number of times but never to a direct link [inaudible].
Elliott Rudwick: Yeah. It's very difficult to establish direct influence, where the ideas come and so on, but there's no question that, for example, Drake and Cayton in the classic Black Metropolis acknowledged Du Bois and his important influence. How much of this... They're also Warner people. There's no evidence that Warner was influenced by Du Bois. There's a complicated kind of thing, so it's hard to... Certainly Sinclair Drake and Horace Cayton were much, I think, effected by the Philadelphia Negro but also by Warner. Okay?
Elliott Rudwick: In terms of the profession, it's really very difficult to understand, to nail down why precisely was Du Bois ignored and shunted aside. I mean, was it because he was Black? Was it because he was a Black radical? You must remember, of course, that his reputation is being anti-Washingtonian would have gone against him as far as recognition, I think, in the field. Some people say that that it's not that unusual for the key journal, the American Journal of Sociology, to have ignored the Philadelphia Negro. They ignored some other books. That sort of thing.
Elliott Rudwick: On the other hand, I think this is significant, that I checked to see, "Okay, you did not review the Philadelphia Negro, but what about the 16 Atlanta University studies that Du Bois directed?" Now, some of them were not very good. On the other hand, if you look at the American Journal of Sociology, you get articles published, things like Sanitation and Social Progress, Toilets and the American Dream, in effect. So, according to my count of the 16 studies, only two were reviewed. I think that there's a pattern.
Charles T. Davi...: [inaudible].
Speaker 7: We've been discussing somewhat earlier not only the ambient influence of Du Bois on later prominent sociologists, but in a positive manner, but in a negative fashion, to the differences that came about. And your frame of reference here has been primarily Du Bois in the development of the Atlanta University studies and the Philadelphia Negro, whereas he did continue to write in a descriptive and analytical manner in a sociological context after that. Although, it was not precisely-
Elliott Rudwick: Well, of course, I do not contend that everything goes to sociological, so he did not regard himself as a sociologist afterward. Really, what was he doing with most of his time after, when he came to the NAACP? He was writing these very important monthly editorials, he was going around speaking to branches and different Black organizations and integrated groups. And this is where he's spending his time. In other words, he regards himself as a propagandist.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I understood that point, but the question is, in terms of some developing ideology after that time, which still can be given a sociological perspective that accounted for some differences between Frazier and Du Bois, for instance.
Elliott Rudwick: Well, what-
Speaker 7: Not methodology. We were talking about [inaudible]. I'm thinking more about contextual kinds of things.
Elliott Rudwick: What are some things, for example?
Speaker 7: Resolutions about the... or when his later discussions about the institutions of the Black community, after the Philadelphia Negro, when he began to analyze in a fairly descriptive manner the importance of the institutions and not so much as social disorganization. But the fact that their strength and importance and continuity and value in terms of survival of the Black community. Now, how does that in terms of Frazier's analysis where the major differences occur, as opposed to similarity? But later on [inaudible].
Elliott Rudwick: Right. Okay. As I said, Frazier felt very close to Du Bois, emotionally. His Master's Thesis dealt at length with the Du Bois/Booker T. Washington conflict. That's the heart of his thesis. In Frazier's The Negro Family in the United States, written in the 1930s, he is not normative. He doesn't have these recommendations and so on, as I said. He's highly influenced by Park. But when he writes the Black Bourgeoisie, he gets rather explicitly normative and recommendational, if I may use that word. So, he, in a sense, goes back to something something of the sort of thing sort of approach Du Bois was taking. I think that there is a similarity in his functional analysis of institutions that is Frazier's and Du Bois'. And I would suggest that there's also a similarity in the concept of disorganization, which Frazier gets in great part from Park as well.
Elliott Rudwick: Remember that in the Philadelphia Negro, as I suggested, there is a prefiguring of the Black bourgeoisie idea of a "Black aristocracy" or "Black elite" that spins... that evokes a conspicuous consumption... trust, which a theme, which E. Franklin Frazier, of course, expands on.
Elliott Rudwick: In the concern for the patterns within Black lower class life of many women, not having jobs, and having children who are not educated and not going to school. This concern that you see in Frazier is also a concern that you see in Du Bois. There is an analysis of the functioning of institutions, but there's also a concern about certain dysfunctional aspects. They were both... they both said, in other words, they are middle class... in effect middle class scholars.
Speaker 9: My question has to do with anthropology as it's related to sociology. You remember in one of those monograms from Atlanta, there was this an extensive statement on the origin of race, et cetera. And the quotes from dental care, et cetera. What do modern anthropologists... How would they do this? What changes have taken place in terms of findings that might change the data presented here?
Speaker 8: I'm not an anthropologist, and so I would not comment much about this, but I would simply say that his... Du Bois' is thrust in the studies was to oppose the notion that it was so widely believed of racial inferiority. And so he marshaled his sources along these lines using, for example, the data of friends Boas, for example, in several of those studies.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I have a question concerning the Du Bois' definition and use of the term "Negro" and whether or not you found any difficulty with that at a time when Southern States were at odds on how you define a Negro... you know... in terms of...
Elliott Rudwick: Right.
Speaker 11: Maybe I should stop with that because I have another follow-up question.
Elliott Rudwick: Okay... The title of his most famous monograph... From sociological monograph is the Philadelphia Negro. 40 years later he wrote a book, another book called "Black Reconstruction". He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He used all of the words... He found no difficulty.
Elliott Rudwick: In 1928, a Black teenager wrote a letter to The Crisis. It went something like this...
Elliott Rudwick: "Dear Dr. Du Bois, Don't you think that if we only changed the name "Negro", got rid of that word, we'd be better off? There wouldn't be so much of a negative thrust associated with that word. Don't you? What's your candid opinion?"
Elliott Rudwick: Then Dr. Du Bois replied in the crisis, in a famous editorial... Yes, what's in a name? "Dear John or Jackie... And he was very avuncular in the reply... the grand old man reply. "Dear Jackie, you know... cheer up kid." That was something because the word kid is in the editorial. "We could be called the [inaudible] and it wouldn't change anything. And you know, don't be troubled by the name..." Is what he said. So he used all of the words.
Speaker 11: Well, I guess the second part of the question is: Even prior to him, there was an awful lot of problems with earlier Black leaders or persons who were considered leaders had with the term, only in the sense that Blacks themselves didn't define this term or couldn't control the conditions for being a member of the group. Hollis Lynch, a Black sociologist at Columbia, in his book explains how Blyden tried to get around that when he described the terrible effects of some pretty mixed-up people in the United States, who were referred to as "mulattoes" or "mixed", and what he did in his movement, which would attempt to take capable, responsible people back to Africa to find only persons who were pure, whatever that means.
Elliott Rudwick: Right.
Speaker 11: Black blood, who could be identified, to go back and blamed a lot of the problems that were going on in America on the so-called "mulattoes," who had, in fact, come up and was so confused in terms of who they were and what they really wanted to do, that they weren't even in a position to be leading people here, and he would haul [crosstalk]
Elliott Rudwick: [crosstalk] Yeah.
Speaker 11: Now there had been several...
Elliott Rudwick: The right... The debate about the term... Was certainly not a new. It was a debated 50-75 years before that "Dear Jackie" letter. For example, in the 1880s and 90s, T. Thomas Fortune attempted to get "Afro-American" as the word that could be used.
Elliott Rudwick: Colored was a favorite word, particularly among mulattoes. I was curious to see what reaction the Census Bureau had about on this very point. And you see in 1900... In the 1900 census a statement that when something like this: "We are using the word "Negro". It is now coming back in fashion, say Negro and nigger," and so that's an important reason why it was lost... Why it wasn't in fashion. And so, the census said, "It is now coming back in fashion as noted by a recent book by Dr. Washington, with the word "Negro" in the title, and a recent book by Dr. Du Bois" of course, referring to "The Philadelphia Negro".
Speaker 12: It seemed, particularly in that article, "What's in a Name?" Du Bois' response to the young student, he seemed to be making a fundamental point that individuals should rather let their behavior define whatever their linguistic definition be, rather than to let the linguist dictate your behavior or your stance.
Elliott Rudwick: Right. I would guess that if Du Bois were alive today, he would be using all of those, probably not colored, but "Negro", and "Black." [crosstalk].
Speaker 12: [crosstalk] And Black...
Elliott Rudwick: ... and "Afro-American".
Speaker 13: Just the term "Negro," Malcolm X and other brothers have gone into what that means. It seems like...
Elliott Rudwick: Well, what does that mean, "Negro"? It means Black.
Speaker 13: No, well not for a number of people, who think it implies an offensive term. Of many people, which denotes nothing more than a cat or a manner of which you'll be treated because many of the so called "Negroes" are not Black, as we discussed yesterday.
Elliott Rudwick: Well, I would reply that certainly I mean no offense. Secondly, certainly Dr. Du Bois had no offense in mind when he used the word "Negro". Certainly Marcus Garvey, in creating his name of an organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, didn't see the offense in it. So that...
Speaker 14: It is a function of our time and I appreciate the context that Du Bois used too.
Elliott Rudwick: Personally, I use all of the words I suspect Du Bois would. I don't use colored though.
Speaker 15: Here again, all of these movements, which have used the term "Negro" have not been, as we might term today, successful either. This is one of another thing that Malcolm and the people who... [crosstalk]
Elliott Rudwick: [crosstalk] Of course, I could reply that certain movements, which use the word Black have not, are no longer in existence. For example, SNCC, which is... Which really, Stokely Carmichael and pushing the word "Black power," there is no SNCC today... Or there are no SNCCs today. So, I mean, I don't know what that... I'm just making that point. Okay?
Speaker 16: You mentioned that Du Bois' book used the term "Negro" was received by Reverend Joe of sociology.
Elliott Rudwick: No, I said it wasn't received at all. [crosstalk]
Speaker 17: Well, I suspect that it wasn't received very well by Black scholarship in general, but conversely, how was the book received by first year aristocratic Black sailor and others you described, and secondly, the Black intelligentsia, and thirdly, the Black community in general.
Elliott Rudwick: And thirdly, the...?
Speaker 17: Black community in general...
Elliott Rudwick: Black community in general...okay. How was the book received at the time by the Philadelphia Black aristocracy?
Elliott Rudwick: My master's thesis was on a Black hospital in Pennsylvania, called the Mercy Douglas Hospital. It was founded by an Afro-American physician, Nathan Mossell. I interviewed his daughter back around, I guess, in the late 1940s. And she pointed out that some proper Black Philadelphians were rather annoyed at being described as "an effect of Black bourgeoisie".
Elliott Rudwick: They didn't like the idea that they were... that he called him guilty of conspicuous consumption, so that some were quite critical. On the other hand, Dr. Mossell himself later joined Du Bois, and helping to found the NAACP, and for a short time was on the board. So there were mixed... If I had a guess, I say more liked it, and saw it for what it was, a very serious study.
Elliott Rudwick: How is the book received today? I would say the book has been re-printed, and the book was reprinted back in 1967 by Shankman Publishers. And rather inexpensively produced for $3, I think... or something... Or so, with an edit and introduction by the noted sociologist, Digby Baltzell of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Baltzell wrote a classic himself called "The Philadelphia Gentlemen". And it's a very laudatory introduction. I suspect, however, that it is mainly read in history classes. I use it. I teach a colloquium on the graduate level called "The Black Sociologists," and use it there. But I suspect that it's not used in too many classrooms in sociology. It's more used in, and rather widely used, in history classes.
Elliott Rudwick: It's referred to, however, now in some fairly recent sociological studies, for example, the sociologist at the University of Texas, Norvall Glenn, deals with it in a famous article on social classes. How the Black... it's hard to generalize about the Black community, and who... who is the Black community? Who are we talking about? His reaction to the Philadelphia Negro? We would have to be more specific. It turns my Black students on the turns, my white students on, it's a terrific book. If you have not read it, I hardily recommend "The Philadelphia Negro"... Fascinating.
Speaker 17: Mr. Singh.
Speaker 8: I have a few brief comments on the use of the term "Negro". One day, Du Bois made a struggle in the twenties, or before, to have that term used with a capital "N," and Shirley Graham, mentioned it more recently, you know...
Elliott Rudwick: No, right. No, the answer to that is this... Du Bois became involved in that struggle, not in the 1920s, but in the 1890s, and so that if you will look at the Philadelphia Negro, you'll see very early in the book, perhaps the first page, there's a kind of asterisk. And at the bottom of the page, he says, "I capitalize the word Negro because nine million Americans deserve this, this kind of respect." The, the fight in the 1920s was to... Particularly directed at the New York Times to make them capitalize it, and he was involved in that, but he was involved much earlier.
Speaker 8: And the second thing was... That when the NAACP was established, colored people was not being used as interchangeable with Negro. If we trust the evidence of the word from the people of Africa, it was being used as a young victim, but on all non-white people thought to be racist, and the organization, at least was theoretically established as a... [crosstalk]
Elliott Rudwick: I have great admiration and respect for Mr. Aptekar, but I would say he's incorrect in this case. [crosstalk].
Speaker 8: What are the...? [crosstalk 00:01:30:46].
Elliott Rudwick: ... Besides that he's wrong? [Crosstalk] That is the whole thrust was... The whole thrust was to do things to advance the status of Negros in the U.S. It is true... It is true that Du Bois, for example, from time to time, would editorialize about the status of people in India. But no... There was no program of the NAACP that had anything to do with Indians. [crosstalk 00:01:31:25].
Elliott Rudwick: Du Bois... In fact, the program of the NAACP was exclusively directed with an exception that I... A couple of exceptions that I made. So almost exclusively directed toward doing something about the status of Negroes in the U.S. Now a few minor exceptions where these:
Elliott Rudwick: One, Du Bois became very influential in pushing the Pan-African movement. And so the NAACP financed one of the congresses in the 1920s to the tune of $1,500 or something, and most of that came out of contributions made by wealthy board members to him.
Elliott Rudwick: Secondly, James Weldon Johnson did some studies of the situation in Haiti, the U.S. Occupation, but the whole thrust was about affairs within the U.S., and of Blacks.
Speaker 8: How would you have gone for the subtitle for the [inaudible]? The subtitle is "The Record of Doctor Races."
Elliott Rudwick: I would say that certainly Du Bois had an interest. Du Bois had an interest in the welfare of Negros and others, but in terms of where he extended his time and his energy... He hoped someday that there would be a third, what we would call a third world, but where he expended his time and energies... Was almost exclusively on Blacks in the U.S.
Speaker 8: Mr. Woodard, do you have a question that has not gone?
Mr. Woodard: I have several questions that have not gone. I had federal, I have studied extensively myself here. [inaudible] Du Bois carries constantly the opinions about capitalizing the term Negro, and occasionally... To an editorial point about [inaudible]... Essentially the same point that you made, or that he makes, in about the colored people of the world, probably the beginning of the crisis magazine, right through. From along the color line of opinions and the other departments, Du Bois shows an increasing awareness of the world's situation involving other colored people. I think he quite correctly makes the assessment that he has concerned himself with, even in the editorials, what they see as the American situation.
Elliott Rudwick: And when it goes beyond that, though, it's with the Pan-African movement. Remember, there was a Pan-African Congress, which he attended as late as 1945. So several of them, yes.
Mr. Woodard: The Races Congress, the First Races... [crosstalk]
Speaker 8: Universal Races Congress of 1911. Yes.
Mr. Woodard: Seems to reflect a kind of interest in Du Bois in the worldwide question. And here it seems to me he has a kind of universalism here...
Elliott Rudwick: Right.
Mr. Woodard: That is implicit in the Pan-African element, but more of that later to come. What are you concerned with now is Du Bois' sort of feeling... his way as he's gone along, feeling that kind of increased pressure of the whole native domestic movement in the country, thinking about not only about what this meant for Blacks here, but thinking about the increasing world power America assumes, and what the eventual impact is on the other side. Seeing America, and the role of the Black man in America, as a kind of divining rod for the world peace movement... [inaudible] Could we say then, that implicit in Du Bois' work was that... Notion that if Black people, and if the colored people who were apart of other colored people like the Chinese, were going to be treated with racial distinctions in the county, and exploited for labor, would they not also be exploited in their own...