This piece of literature should be required reading for all decolonized social science syllabi and reading lists. Du Bois gives insight on the lives of Negroes living in Philadelphia that is relevant today; his methodology crisp, his analysis insightful. I especially appreciated his description of philanthropy in an unromantic posture: they are called benevolent despots. How apt is that?

Now more than ever Americans need to read intelligent research on how black American communities historically dealt with institutionalized forms of racial and economic oppression. Published in the late 1800s, this book is a calm, sober overview of black life in an industrialized northeastern American city during the 19th Century.

WEB DuBois got his doctorate in Germany, and helped organize the first Pan African Congress in 1900, hoping to bring early liberation to Europe’s African colonies. He was only one of many African American scholars to dedicate himself to documenting and uplifting black people internationally in a post-industrial world.

This book offers interesting and needed correlations to contemporary socioeconomic studies of major American cities, especially in 2022, when national elections are looking at statistics on education, crime, employment, and racial justice to decide what new laws and social reforms to implement.