Du Bois, commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania and published in 1899 with the intent of identifying social problems present in the African American community.

[3] Du Bois carefully mapped every black residence, church, and business in the city's Seventh Ward, recording occupational and family structure.

[5] Crime, poverty and drug addiction were among the many issues that the Philadelphia Negro population dealt with that added to the apparent social blight of the community.

[7] This survey data included the vital statistics of Black individuals within the city, information about their places of birth, occupation, health, ages, sex, etc.

Its western fringe was occupied by affluent whites, its center filled with one of the nation's densest concentrations of Black elites, and its eastern front inhabited by numerous poor from both races.

Addressing this contradiction, Du Bois explained that Black members of the community possessed their own internal class structure, and therefore should not be judged solely by the "submerged tenth," the ten percent of the population who were beneath the surface of socioeconomic viability.

Du Bois found that African Americans had to pay "abnormally high rents for the poorest accommodations, and race-prejudice accentuates this difficulty, out of which many evils grow.