One other group seeking sanctuary in the cities, but found little solace there. African-Americans were escaping the South in increasing numbers during the 1890s as the thumbscrews of Jim Crow were tightened. Lynchings were widely reported in the Northern press, but seldom exhibited any moral outrage more deep than "chortling over those barbarous Southerners." Slavery had been ended in 1865, that was seen as good enough and it was time to get back to normalcy; the Supreme Court in several rulings starting with United States v. Cruikshank put the kibosh on further enforcement of civil rights.Blacks in Northern cities were crowded into tenements even worse than those inhabited by European immigrants. Philadelphia, the geographically closest Northern city to the South, attracted a large number of blacks early on; even prior to the Civil War it had boasted a relatively large black community. By the McKinley years there were over 40,000 there. Philadelphia in the 1890s was a strongly Republican city; in days of old it had been Federalist/Whig territory, and the Republican leadership there were happy to take black votes while doing little else to benefit them as their lives were dominated by squalor, poverty, and crime.Enter William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. The Bay State had long been on the forefront of Negro rights; it was the second-ever state to abolish slavery back in 1783 when a household servant named Quock Walker sued for his freedom and won on the grounds that the state constitution declared all men to be created equal, and it was the only state prior to the 15th Amendment that permitted blacks to vote. Du Bois studied at Fisk University and Harvard, then spent two years in Germany before coming back to Harvard to get his PhD.
Du Bois spent 16 months immersing himself in the slum life of Philly's 7th Ward in 1896-98 and then wrote and published his study on it. Many of the local blacks were somewhat uncooperative and unwilling to be interviewed by this New England dandy who dressed neatly in suits and vests, carried a cane, and was unfailingly formal and polite. Some told Du Bois "Are we animals waiting to be dissected by an unknown Negro?" But most were amenable to interviews and he spent months walking around the black ghetto, knocking on doors and asking if the residents would like to participate in his study.He came to the conclusion that black poverty was not racial but due to the disgraceful legacy of slavery. Yet Philadelphia in the 19th century did still boast a black middle class with professionals such as doctors and attorneys, and blacks were also heavily represented in the catering industry. But by 1898 the black catering business in Philly was in decline; the city's elites were becoming too sophisticated for that now and instead looked to New York City, London, and Paris for fashion and culinary ideas. Old staples like turtle soup seemed outmoded and un-hip and so was hosting parties at home instead of in clubs or restaurants. Du Bois thought if the black caterers were white, they could be employed in some hotel restaurant or fancy restaurant.
Further, the large wave of ill-educated, fresh out of the cotton fields Southern blacks migrating into Philly were dragging the community down and the waves of European immigrants were preferred by employers and could more readily assimilate. Certain labor unions such as the cigar makers had no objection to inviting blacks as members, others were explicitly white-only. Industrial facilities largely avoided hiring blacks altogether; one notable exception was Germantown's Midvale Steel Works. Starting wages at the mill were $1.20 a day ($43 a day in 2022 dollars) and mixed race. This was partially to prevent workers from forming ethnic cliques as foremen preferred to have their teams made up exclusively of the same ethnic group as themselves but mixing everyone up was a ploy by the managers to avoid that as well as prevent workers from unionizing. But Midvale was an exception. For the most part the captains of industry did not hire black workers and blacks were confined only to the most lowly, menial jobs.Nobody in 1898 imagined that W.E.B. DuBois would end his days a communist living in self-imposed exile in Ghana, where he died in 1963 at the age of 95.
>>16810428if he went to North Philly to do that study today he'd get shot, robbed, his car broken into, etc.
>>16810415Common Mass W until those papist fuckers took over
>>16810430>Starting wages at the mill were $1.20 a day ($43 a day in 2022 dollars) We've fallen so far
>>16810558>>16810428that's funny because 19th-early 20th century blacks were somewhat functional and able to have careers while i can't imagine anyone in Filthadelphia being able to do anything at all except crime
*while i can't imagine anyone in 21st century Filthadelphia being able to do anything at all except crime i mean
>>16810565Yep, because Catholicism was the religion opposed to black civil rights. Oh wait...
>>16810415>Slavery had been ended in 1865It hasn't.https://www.vice.com/en/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s
