Mapping Courage: Honoring the Legacy of W.E.B Du Bois and Engine 11

Mapping Courage: Honoring the Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois and Engine 11 by artist Willis “Nomo” Humphrey is painted on the wall of Engine #11, a historical African-American firehouse. Du Bois is depicted towering over a city scene, a census flowing from his hand and out into the street. His figure faces a group of African-American firemen. W.E.B. Du Bois, a Harvard graduate in sociology, was asked to conduct a survey of blacks living in Philadelphia’s 7th Ward in 1896. It served as a basis for his 1899 paper, The Philadelphia Negro. The area of Philadelphia studied now has some of the most expensive real estate in the city including the Rittenhouse and Washington Square neighborhoods. Du Bois lived in Philadelphia for a year, while working at the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant in sociology. During that period he went door-to-door interviewing several thousand black households. He classified each by social class according to his own judgment and used colors to represent each group on a map of the seventh ward. Du Bois’ final 500 page report addressed black history, employment, housing, religion, crime, and family compositions. The census expressed a mix of harsh Victorian opinions on lower class blacks as well as insightful comments about racism and discrimination. His methods were ahead of his time, combining ethnography, survey methods, mapping and statistical analysis.