In 1995, with the assistance of a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities, a number of scholars gathered at the University of Pennsylvania to commemorate the centenary of W. E. B. Du Bois's study The Philadelphia Negro (New York, 1967 [1899]). This collection of essays is the result of that conference; it attempts to situate Du Bois's project within the social and intellectual contexts of the late nineteenth century and to examine how it may help us understand contemporary intersections of race and the city.