The Philadelphia Negro - the Forgotten Beginnings of Empirical Social Research in the USA

Abstract

This paper focuses on "The Philadelphia Negro", a community study that stands at the start of American social research. This empirical study from 1899 describes a slum neighbourhood in Philadelphia inhabited by African Americans.

Its author was an economist, historian and sociologist - Harvard University graduate - African American W. E.

B. Du Bois.

Keywords

• The Philadelphia Negro
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• empirical social research - the beginnings of
• empirical social research in U.S.