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W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1901 Study of Black Life in New York City [1]

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Date: 2024-12-01  

W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1901 Study of Black Life in New York City

Alan J. Singer, New York History, Summer 2024, 79-183

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/new-york-history/

In November and December 1901, the New York Times published a series of articles by African American scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Dr. Du Bois was the first African American to earn a Harvard University PhD and later was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During his long career, Dr. Du Bois published pioneering studies of the transatlantic slave trade, the period of Reconstruction after the American Civil War, and Black urban life in northern cities. In The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago IL: McClure, 1903), he used African American spirituals to explore both the consciousness of African Americans and its roots in their experience enslaved and free in a segregated and racist United States.

Among his many essays, Du Bois penned a six-article series concerning African American history and experience, including a survey of Black life in New York City called “The Black North: A Social Study.” The articles in this series are worth revisiting and incorporating into the high school social studies and history curriculum because the issues African Americans faced over 120 years ago continue to impact diverse contemporary com- munities across the United States.

As a teacher, I find local events that illustrate broader themes and help engage students in the study of history, which makes this series of articles especially important for teaching about topics like race in America and urbanization. The introductory article briefly exam- ined the history of African Americans in New York City.

The New York State Social Studies Framework for 11th grade United States History and Government recommends teachers lead students through a unit surveying industrialization and urbanization from 1870 to 1920. Students examine how “the United States was transformed from an agrarian to an increasingly industrial and urbanized society. Although this transformation created new economic opportunities, it also created societal problems that were addressed by a variety of reform efforts.” This includes examining “demographic trends associated with urbanization and immigration between 1840 and 1920” (38). A later unit on the 1920s asks students to explore how “African Americans continued to struggle for social and economic equality while expanding their own thriving and unique culture. African American cultural achievements were increasingly integrated into national culture” (40). Exploring complexity is a major goal for students in the State Framework (7; 30).

The Du Bois series as a primary source provides a cohesive subject through which students can examine African American experiences during the period, explore forces associated with industrial and urban growth, and investigate the dynamic developments associated with the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. As the state frameworks also recommend stimulating class discussions by connecting current events with historical issues and developments, students can further extend their analysis by comparing situations faced by African Americans in urban centers at the start of the 20th century with conditions that African Americans, new immigrants, and other minority groups grapple with today.

I recommend that social studies teachers provide students with a document package that they can examine in cooperative learning teams over the course of a couple of days and respond to in full class discussion. Students would discuss Du Bois’s assertion that what he calls the “negro problem” is a national concern and “not the sole property of the South.” They would also discuss whether what Du Bois identifies as the “negro problem” is actually the problem of lingering racism in American society. The first day I introduce the topic by having the class examine and discuss Du Bois’s introduction to the second article in the series. The compelling question for this discussion is, “Is Du Bois describing the ‘negro problem’ or an ‘American problem’?”

“The negro problem is not the sole property of the South. To be sure, it is there most complicated and pressing. Yet north of Mason and Dixon’s line there live today three-quarters of a million men of negro lineage. Nearly 400,000 of these live in New England and the Middle Atlantic States, and it is this population that I wish especially to study in a series of papers. The growth of this body of negroes has been rapid since the war. There were 150,000 in 1860, 225,000 in 1880, and about 385,000 today. It is usually assumed that this group of persons has not formed to any extent a ‘problem’ in the North, that during a century of freedom they have had an assured social status and the same chance for rise and development as the native white American, or at least as the foreign immigrant. This is not true. It can be safely asserted that since early Colonial times the North has had a distinct race problem. Every one of these States had slaves, and at the beginning of Washington’s Administration there were 40,000 black slaves and 17,000 black freemen in this section. The economic failure of slavery as an investment here gave the better conscience of Puritan and Quaker a chance to be heard, and processes of gradual emancipation were begun early in the nineteenth century. Some of the slaves were sold South and eagerly welcomed there. Most of them staid in the North and became a free negro population. They were not, however, really free. Socially they were ostracized. Strict laws were enacted against intermarriage. They were granted rights of suffrage with some limitations. but these limitations were either increased or the right summarily denied afterward. North as well as South the negroes have emerged from slavery into a serfdom of poverty and restricted rights. Their history since has been the history of the gradual but by no means complete breaking down of remaining barriers.”

I begin every class lesson with a Do Now and Motivation that establishes or reestablishes the context for the day’s lesson. The Do Now involves brief reading of a text, chart, graph, cartoon, or photograph and answering three or four questions. The Motivation can be discussion of the Do Now and its connection, if any, with previous events we had learned about in class or with contemporary issues. In this case the Do Now would be a section from one of the passages in the document package. On days two and three students meet in heterogeneous learning teams to evaluate documents in the package and answer guiding questions. As closure, I usually have one of the teams report to the class on their progress. On day four, we have a class dialogue. Each team selects a representative to present their analysis and then each student has an opportunity to respond. I would open the lesson with the quote from The Souls of Black Folk, “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line” (3), and ask if they believe this statement is an accurate description of race in America in the 21st century. As part of the discussion, I would ask students to address two compelling questions at the end of the lesson, “Is what Du Bois identifies as the ‘negro problem’ actually the problem of lingering racism in American society?” and “Does lingering racism continue to be a major problem in the United States in the twenty-first century?”

Following the full class discussion, students complete a summative essay patterned on the United States History and Government Regents short essay question. Students would “describe the historical context of two documents and analyze one of the documents” and “explain how audience, or purpose, or bias, or point of view affects this document’s use as a reliable source of evidence.” In a unit examine, selections from the Du Bois articles can be included in a Regents-style civic literacy essay where students analyze a series of documents on either the African American experience after the Civil War or conditions in expanding cities at the beginning of the 20th century. Selections from the articles can also be used as prompts for multiple-choice questions.

Dr. Du Bois, in an introductory article published on November 17, 1901, argued, “The negro problem is not the sole property of the South.” However, he acknowledged that at the start of the 20th century there were significant differences between the experience of African Americans in the South where three-fourths lived in rural counties and the North where 90 percent lived in urban areas. Du Bois noted that in the “North there is a sharper division of the negroes into classes and a greater difference in attainment and training than one finds in the South.”

The history of New York City from the Dutch New Amsterdam settlement until the start of the 20th century illustrated Du Bois’s contention about race and class in the American North.

“From the earliest settlement of Manhattan, when the Dutch West India Company was pledging itself to furnish the new settlers with plenty of negroes, down to 1900, when the greater city contained 60,000 black folk, New York has had a negro problem.... At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were 1,500 negroes in New York City. They were house servants and laborers, and often were hired out by their masters, taking their stand for this purpose at the foot of Wall Street. By the middle of the century the population had doubled, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century it was about 9,000, five-sixths of whom were free by the act of gradual emancipation. In 1840 the population was over 16,000, but it fell off to 12,500 in 1860 on account of the competition of foreign workmen and race riots. Since the [Civil] war it has increased rapidly to 20,000 in 1880 and to 36,000 on Manhattan Island in 1900. The annexed districts raise this total to 60,000 for the whole city.”

In 1898, New York City merged with the previously independent city of Brooklyn. The new New York City included five counties, New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Bronx, and Richmond (Staten Island). In the article, Dr. Du Bois tracked the shifting pat- tern of Black housing in the new greater New York City.

“Early in the eighteenth century the negroes lived and congregated in the hovels along the wharves and of course in the families of the masters. The centre of black population then moved slowly north, principally on the east side, until it reached Mulberry Street, about 1820. Crossing Broadway, a generation later the negroes clus- tered about Sullivan and Thompson Streets until after the war, when they moved northward along Seventh Avenue. From 1870 to 1890, the population was more and more crowded and congested in the negro districts between Twenty-sixth and Sixty- third Streets. Since then there has been considerable dispersion to Brooklyn and Harlem districts, although the old centres are still full. The migration to Brooklyn began about 1820 and received its greatest impetus from the refugees at the time of the draft riots. In 1870 there were 5,000 negroes in Brooklyn. Since then the population has increased very rapidly, and it has consisted largely of the better class of negroes in search of homes and seeking to escape the contamination of the Tenderloin.”

A disproportionate percentage of African Americans in New York City were women of all ages and young men. Many were recent arrivals in the city from areas of the South were anti-Black riots and segregation laws were making life increasingly difficult. “Two-thirds of the young men twenty to twenty-four years of age are unmarried, and five-eighths of the young women.” People often remained unmarried because “the work of the negroes was the least remunerative, they receive a third less per week than the other nationalities.” Dr. Du Bois blamed the impoverished conditions in the Black communities on racism. “Before the civil war the negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the negro found public opinion determined to ‘keep him in his place.’” As a result, “Seventy-four per cent of the working negro population are common laborers and servants.”

Class divisions within the Black community emerged as earlier arrivals “voluntarily withdrew from bootblacking, barbering, table waiting, and menial service.” Dr. Du Bois found “Twenty-six per cent of the negroes have risen to a degree and gained a firmer eco- nomic foothold. Twelve per cent of these have gone but a step higher: these are the porters, packers, messengers, draymen, and the like—a select class of laborers, often well paid and more independent than the old class of upper house servants.” In addition, “Ten per cent of the colored people are skilled laborers—cigarmakers, barbers, tailors and dressmakers, builders, stationary engineers, &c. Five and one-half per cent are in business enterprises, chiefly real estate, the catering business, undertaking, drug stores, hotels and restaurants, express teaming, &c ... there are about ten negro lawyers in New York, twenty physicians, and at least ninety in the civil service as clerks, mail carriers, public school teachers, and the like.... Already in the public schools there are one Principal, two special teachers, and about thirty-five classroom teachers of negro blood.”

The second article in the New York Times series, November 24, 1901, was an in-depth look at African Americans in New York City at the opening of the 20th century. “Of the 60,000 negroes in New York about 15,000 are supported by workers who earn a good living in vocations above domestic service and common labor. Some thirty thousand are kept above actual want by the wages of servants and day laborers. This leaves a great strug- gling, unsuccessful sub-stratum of 15,000.... These are not all paupers or scamps, but they form that mass of men who through their own fault or through the fault of conditions about them have not yet succeeded in successfully standing the competition of the city.” Dr. Du Bois called New York’s attitude toward its Black citizens “disgraceful,” condemning “45,000 hard working and successful people, who have struggled up in spite of slavery, riot, and discrimination, on account of 15,000 who have not yet succeeded and whom New Yorkers have helped to fail.”

New York in 1901 was a very segregated city.

“The child’s neighbors, as he grows up, are colored, for he lives in a colored district. In the public school he comes into intimate touch with white children, but as they grow up public opinion forces them to discard their colored acquaintances, and they soon forget even the nod of recognition. The young man’s friends and associates are therefore all negroes. When he goes to work, he works alongside colored men in most cases; his social circle, his clubs and organizations throughout the city are all con- fined to his own race, and his contact with whites is practically confined to economic relationships, the streets, and street cars, with occasionally some intercourse at public amusements.”

Dr. Du Bois argued that the impact of “color prejudice on the mass of negroes” was clearest in an examination of housing in the city. According to a study by the Federation of Churches, in the Eleventh and Thirteenth Assembly Districts in Manhattan, home to about 10 percent of New York City’s Black population, almost 20 percent lived in one- and two- room tenements, and “400 of the rooms had no to access to the outer air and 655 had but one window.” To live in this substandard housing, “negroes pay from $1 to $2 a month more than whites for similar tenements—an excess rent charge which must amount to a quarter of a million dollars annually.” In Manhattan’s Tenderloin district, from 23rd Street to 42nd Street and 5th Avenue to 7th Avenue, where the newer arrivals lived, “the average family occupies three small rooms, for which it pays $10 to $15 a month. If the family desires a home further from the vice and dirt of New York’s most dangerous slum. It must go either to Brooklyn or, far from work, up town, or be prepared to pay exorbitant rents in the vicinity of Fifty-third Street.” Housing conditions were so difficult that “40 per cent of the families take lodgers and in only 50 per cent of the cases are the lodgers in any way related to the families.”

Dr. Du Bois reported that the “centre of negro life in New York is still the church, although its all-inclusive influence here is less than in a Southern city.” Within the city there were between thirty and forty Black churches, including seven or eight with large congregations. The churches reflected class divides. The older and more affluent Black community attended either St. Philip’s Episcopal Church or Mother Zion. Newer immigrants from the South generally attended smaller Baptist churches.

In the article Dr. Du Bois addressed crime in the African American community, what he called the “most sinister index of social degradation.” He argued, “What else is this but the logical result of bad homes, poor health, restricted opportunities for work, and general social oppression. That the present situation is abnormal all admit. That the negro under normal conditions is law-abiding and good-natured cannot be disputed. We have but to change conditions, then, to reduce negro crime.”

Although Dr. Du Bois did not discuss the incidents in the series, in 1900 a police riot in the Tenderloin District of New York City shook the African American community and escalated into an international incident. The riot was precipitated by the death of an out-of-uniform police officer, Robert Thorpe, who died in an altercation with a Black man, Arthur Harris. Harris was later arrested in Washington, DC, and sentenced to life in prison in the Sing Sing correctional facility.

On August 16, 1900, the New York Times reported:

“For four hours last night Eighth Avenue, from Thirtieth to Forty-second Street, was a scene of the wildest disorder that this city has witnessed in years. The hard feeling between the white people and the Negroes in that district, which has been smolder- ing for many years and which received fresh fuel by the death of Policeman Thorpe, who was shot last Sunday by a Negro, burst forth last night into a race riot which was not subdued until the reserve force of four police precincts, numbering in all over 100 men, headed by Chief Devery himself, were called to the scene and succeeded in clearing the streets by a liberal use of their night sticks.... As a result of the riot a considerable number of wounded negroes were attended by surgeons at the Roosevelt Hospital. The greater number of those who were injured, however, preferred to remain in their houses, being afraid of the crowds on the streets while on the way to the police station or hospital. Every car passing up or down Eighth Avenue between the hours of 8 and 11 was stopped by the crowd and every negro on board was dragged out, hustled about, and beaten until he was able to break away from his assailants and escape into a house or down a side street.”

Other articles in the series addressed Black life in Philadelphia and Boston. In the final article, published on December 15, 1901, W. E. B. Du Bois concluded, “The average negro to-day knows the white world only from afar.” From the white community, African Americans experience “negative indifference, positive prejudice, and some pecuniary interests against the negro” resulting in a “burdensome” life, denied of opportunities “America offers freely to every race and people except those whom she has most cruelly wronged.” In 1901, Dr. Du Bois did suggest possible avenues for African American advancement, but they all depended on self-help in the Black community. He did not expect much help from northern white people.

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. In “The Forethought,” he argued that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line” (xi). As a project on race in America today, high school students could replicate “The Black North: A Social Study” using contemporary data and debate whether the problem of the 21st century in the United States continues to be the color line.

The compelling questions at the end of the student dialogue, “Is what Du Bois identifies as the ‘negro problem’ actually the problem of lingering racism in American society?” and “Does lingering racism continue to be a major problem in the United States in the twenty-first century?” help introduce students to the complexity of historical analysis highlighted in the State Social Studies Framework while engaging students in a discussion that connects the past and present. Contemporary issues are used to help students better understand the past, and historical analysis is used to help students better understand the present. This unit introduces issues that will be addressed again in discussion of the Great Migration of the 1920s, the post-World War II African American civil rights movement, and current debate over voting rights, affirmative action, the 1619 Project, and Black Lives Matter. Toward the end of the school year students complete a thematic essay on race in America where they respond to a series of primary source documents, including excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville’s assertion in Democracy in America (1835) that the “white and black races” will never live in the United States on an “equal footing”; the Du Bois study; Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 book, An American Dilemma; and the 1968 Kerner Commission report on the causes of civil disorder in American cities.

A close examination of the Du Bois articles helps students better understand the concept of an enduring issue that is part of the New York State Social Studies 9–12 Framework. “An enduring issue is a challenge or problem that has been debated or discussed across time. An enduring issue is one that many societies have attempted to address with varying degrees of success.” For an essay, students could be asked to “identify and explain an enduring issue” raised in the documents; argue why the issue they selected is “significant and how it has endured across time”; show “how the issue has affected people or has been affected by people”; or explain “how the issue has continued to be an issue or has changed over time.” Enduring issues typically introduced in the high school curriculum include human rights violations like injustice and discrimination; the impact of urbanization; and equity. Analysis of the Du Bois articles also helps prepare students for the Civic Literacy Essay Question on the 11th grade United States History and Government Regents examination. For this essay, students are asked to “describe the historical circumstances surrounding” a “constitutional or civic issue”; explain efforts by individuals, groups, and/or governments to address this constitutional or civic issue; and discuss the extent to which the efforts were successful.” As a culminating activity, students could write either an enduring issue or civic literacy essay using Regents exam guidelines. Students could be asked to include in the essays their own ideas for how problems of the “color-line” can be addressed in the United States today.

The Negro in New York City (1900) Document Package

Note: These documents are excerpts from two of the articles in “The Black North: A Social Study” by W. E. B. Du Bois that were published in the New York Times in November and December 1901. In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois referred to African Americans as “Negroes” or “American Negroes.” The decision to spell Negroes with a lower case “n” in these articles was made by the New York Times.

A. Economic Opportunity

Questions

What evidence does Dr. Du Bois cite to support his statement that “as a race the negroes are not lazy”? What evidence does Dr. Du Bois provide to support his claim that African Americans were not to blame for their economic position?

“As a race the negroes are not lazy. The canvass of the Federation of Churches in typical New York tenement districts has shown that while nearly 99 per cent. of the black men were wage earners, only 92 per cent. of the Americans and 90 per cent. of the Germans were at work. At the same time the work of the negroes was least remunerative, they receiving a third less per week than the other nationalities. Nor can the disabilities of the negroes be laid altogether at the door of ignorance. Probably they are even less acquainted with city life and organized industry than most of the foreign laborers. In illiteracy, however, negroes and foreigners are about equal—five-sixths being able to read and write ... the candid ob- server easily sees that the negro’s economic position in New York has not been determined simply by efficiency in open competition, but that race prejudice has played a large and de- cisive part. Probably in free competition ex-slaves would have suffered some disadvantages in entering mechanical industries. When race feeling was added to this they were almost totally excluded.”

B. Social Mobility

Questions

What evidence is provided to support the claim that at least part of the African American population achieved some social mobility? According to Dr. Du Bois, why is it “very difficult for negroes to get experience and training in modern business methods”?

“Some of the negroes succeeded in their efforts to rise, some did not. Thus every obstacle placed in the way of their progress meant increased competition at the bottom. Twenty-six per cent. of the negroes have risen to a degree and gained a firmer economic foothold. Twelve per cent. of these have gone but a step higher; these are the porters, packers, mes- sengers, draymen, and the like—a select class of laborers, often well paid and more inde- pendent than the old class of upper house servants before the war, to which they in some respects correspond.... Ten per cent. of the colored people are skilled laborers—cigarmak- ers, barbers, tailors and dressmakers, builders, stationary engineers, &c. Five and one-half per cent. are in business enterprises of various sorts ... it is very difficult for negroes to get experience and training in modern business methods. Young colored men can seldom get positions above menial grade, and the training of the older men unfits them for competitive business. Then always the uncertain but ever present factor of racial prejudice is present to hinder or at least make more difficult the advance of the colored merchant or business man, in new or unaccustomed lines.”

C. Housing Conditions

Questions

What were housing conditions like for New York City’s African American population? How did job and housing discrimination contribute to overcrowding in New York City’s African American communities?

“In no better way can one see the effects of color prejudice on the mass of the negroes than by studying their homes. The work of the Federation of Churches in the Eleventh and Thirteenth Assembly Districts, where over 6,000 negroes live, found 19 per cent. living in one and two room tenements, 37 per cent. in three rooms, and 44 per cent. in four or more rooms. Had the rooms been of good size and the rents fair this would be a good showing; but 400 of the rooms had no access to the outer air and 655 had but one window. Moreover, for these accommodations the negroes рау from $1 to $2 a month more than the whites for similar tenements—an excess rent charge which must amount to a quarter of a million dollars annually throughout the city.... Finding work scarce and rent high, he turns for relief to narrow quarters and the lodging system. In the more crowded colored districts 40 per cent. of the families take lodgers and in only 50 per cent. of the cases are the lodgers in any way related to the families. Unknown strangers are thus admitted to the very heart of homes in order that the rent may be paid.... A great mass of people, bringing with them a host of unhealthful habits, living largely in tenements, with wretched sanitary appliances, and in poor repair—such a mass must necessarily have a higher death rate than the average among the whites.”

D. Crime

Questions

What does Dr. Du Bois argue is the underlying cause of “negro crime”? In your opinion, what did Dr. Du Bois mean when he asserted, “The most sinister index of social degradation and struggle is crime”?

“The most sinister index of social degradation and struggle is crime ... we may use the arrests in New York City as a crude indication of negro crime. These indicate that from 1870 to 1885 the negroes formed about 2 per cent. of the arrests, the best record they have had in the city. From 1885 to 1895 the proportion rose to 21⁄2 per cent., and since then it has risen to 31⁄2 per cent.... In the State in 1890 every 10,000 negroes furnished 100 prisoners.... What else is this but the logical result of bad homes, poor health, restricted opportunities for work, and general social oppression? That the present situation is abnormal all admit. That the negro under normal conditions is law-abiding and good-natured cannot be disputed. We have but to change conditions, then, to reduce negro crime.”

E. Segregation

Questions

Why did African American children grow up isolated from the city’s white population? According to Dr. Du Bois, how did most African American New Yorkers respond to racism and segregation?

“We have so far a picture of the negro from without—his numbers, his dwelling place, his work, his health, and crime. Let us now ... place ourselves within the negro group and by studying that inner life look with him out upon the surrounding world. When a white person comes once vividly to realize the disabilities under which a negro labors, the public contempt and thinly veiled private dislike, ... the question comes, How can they stand it? The answer is clear and peculiar: They do not stand it; they withdraw themselves as far as possible from it into a world of their own. They live and move in a community of their own kith and kin and shrink quickly and permanently from these rough edges where contact with the larger life of the city wounds and humiliates them.... To see what this means in practice, let us follow the life of an average New York negro.... The child’s neighbors, as he grows up, are colored, for he lives in a colored district. In the public school he comes into intimate touch with white children, but as they grow up public opinion forces them to discard their colored acquaintances, and they soon forget even the nod of recognition. The young man’s friends and associates are therefore all negroes. When he goes to work he works alongside colored men in most cases; his social circle, his clubs and organizations throughout the city are all confined to his own race, and his contact with the whites is practically confined to economic relationships, the streets, and street cars, with occasionally some intercourse at public amusements.”

Summary Question: In your opinion, what was the impact of the systematic racism described in these articles on New York City’s African American population?

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