Sex Of Negro Population

A chart from The Negro American family; Report of a social study made by the College classes of 1909 and 1910 of Atlanta University, by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, under the patronage of the trustees of the John F. Slater Fund; together with the Proceedings of the 13th annual Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, held at Atlanta University, on Tuesday, May the 26th, 1908. (published 1908)


In Negotiation of African American Identities in Rural America: A Cultural Contracts Approach, Ronald L. Jackson II and James B. Stewart, both of Pennsylvania State University, discuss W. E. B. Du Bois' philosophies:

Du Bois did not view the wholesale assimilation of the culture of the larger society as the ideal developmental path for Black families. In discussing sexual mores, he (1908, 42) argued: “The Negro attitude in these matters is in many respects healthier and more reasonable. Their sexual passions are strong and frank . . .The Negro motherlove and family instinct is strong, and it regards the family as a means, not an end, and although the end in the present Negro mind is usually personal happiness rather than social order, yet even here radical reformers of divorce courts have something to learn.”

Image, via NYPL digital collection.

See also: Papers of Caroline Bond Day who published A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States (1932).