Exploring Philly’s Seventh Ward through the eyes of W.E.B. Du Bois

Tayyib Smith spent three years reading historical markers as he walked from his home in Fitler Square to his girlfriend’s spot in Queen Village.

His journey took him through the old Seventh Ward — a swath of Center City bounded by Spruce and South Streets and extending from Seventh Street to the Schuylkill. He passed markers for the Institute for Colored Youth at Ninth and Bainbridge and the home of abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor William Still on South Delhi Street.

Considered one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in Philadelphia, the Seventh Ward is at the heart of W.E.B. Du Bois’ landmark 1899 study, The Philadelphia Negro.

“The markers just weren’t enough,” said Smith, a serial entrepreneur, a partner in The Growth Collective real estate investment firm, founder of Little Giant Creative, and a self-taught history buff. “The 20 to 25 words on those blue signs, to me, just weren’t enough.”

Smith designed an interactive experience that would teach the Seventh Ward’s rich history to Philadelphians, especially those new to the neighborhood. He partnered with the Philadelphia City Archives and the Mayor’s Fund in 2019, and was awarded a $240,000 grant from the Pew Center for the Arts & Heritage Foundation the next year. In November, Smith launched “Legacy Reclaimed: A 7th Ward Tribute,” a walking tour, series of talks, and exhibitions that celebrate the history of the Seventh Ward.

The 90-minute walking tour, curated by the University of Pennsylvania’s associate professor of social work and Du Bois scholar, Amy Hillier, starts and ends at Mother Bethel, the world’s first African Methodist Episcopal Church at Sixth and Lombard. The 12 stops include poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s home at 10th and Bainbridge and the site of civil rights leader Octavius Catto’s murder at Eighth and South. Guided tours are free and are every Saturday morning through Feb. 24.

The Colored Girls Museum’s “Harriet’s Girls,” an exhibit in Mother Bethel’s lecture hall, is a shout-out to Harriet Tubman, and the women of the ward. (Tubman lived there when she escaped bondage.) Larger-than-life early- to mid-20th-century photos of the neighborhood’s residents — assembled by Beth Naomi Lewis and Amelia Carter — are mounted in windows of homes and businesses along the route. The photos remind passersby that the now-gentrified neighborhood was a proud home to Black-owned hospitals, restaurants, theaters, and churches, serving as the backbone of Philadelphia’s Black community during the height of segregation. The photos, collectively called “Reflecting Revenants,, are on display at Rex at the Royal, formally the Royal Theater, Philadelphia’s first and largest Black-run theater through 1970.

Interest in tours, exhibits, and television shows featuring the lives of Black people during the time we were enslaved and decades immediately after are growing. In Philadelphia, walking tours that retrace Catto’s and Tubman’s steps have attracted wide audiences. The Museum of the American Revolution recently closed its popular “Black Founders” salute to sailmaker and revolutionary James Forten. In November, Michiko Quinones and Morgan Lloyd launched “1838 Black Metropolis,” an interactive website and walking tour focusing on the lives of Black Americans who lived in what is now Society Hill.

HBO’s The Gilded Age features native Philadelphian and Black aristocrat Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), who graduated from the Institute for Colored Youth. In the series, her family worships at a church resembling Mother Bethel. “If Black children in this, this poorest big city in America, knew the history of the places our ancestors walked, maybe they would hold their heads up higher,” Smith said. “Because they would know our people’s journey.”

A Harvard University graduate and professor of ancient languages at Wilberforce University, Du Bois was commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 to study Philadelphia’s “Negro problem.” Home to 40,000 Black people, Philadelphia boasted the largest Black population in the Northeast, 10,000 of whom lived in the Seventh Ward.

Du Bois lived on St. Mary’s Street — now Rodman Street — and spent two years visiting about 5,000 Black homes and businesses. The Seventh Ward, he found, wasn’t desolate and riddled with poverty, but a thriving neighborhood made up of poor, middle-, and upper-class Black people. The Seventh Ward was a hub of the Black community well into the 1960s. However, by the mid-1970s, middle-class Black people left, the result of integration and the influx of crime, drugs, and the city’s disinvestment in the neighborhood.

“If you are Black and your family came to Philadelphia during the Great Migration, there is a good chance you have roots in South Philly,” said Smith at his home one day this winter. He remembered visiting relatives who lived near South Street between 10th and 17th Streets in the 1980s, the businesses and homes shells of what they used to be.

Steam from an electric tea kettle floated over a bookshelf with black-and-white photographs of Smith’s family, including his great-grandfather, Marcellus Fisher, who moved to South Philadelphia from South Carolina during the first wave of the Great Migration in the early 1900s, and his Aunt Minnie who he said “lived and died in South Philadelphia.”

By the early 2000s, most of the Seventh Ward was largely gentrified. Today, only 7% of residents in the Seventh Ward are African American. Smith, who lives in a rowhouse tucked off South Street, with his then-girlfriend, who is now his wife — and who is white — could be considered a gentrifier. He bristled at the suggestion.

“I bought this house between Fitler Street and Queen Village with the intention of preserving the history of people who look like me,” Smith, who is 52, said. “This project comes out of my own frustration of seeing my people displaced. I get frustrated with my white neighbors and colleagues who have an illiterate perspective on the history of the Black experience in Philadelphia.”

“Legacy Reclaimed” is doing its part to change the perspective. Each week the tours are at capacity with more than 40 people in attendance. Elementary, high school, and college classes sign up. While many Black people like Sophie Ezomoghene enjoy the walk, calling it a “one-of-a-kind learning experience that speaks to the nerd in her,” most of the participants are white who live in the Seventh Ward and are curious about its history. Many, like Judith Benedict, come having done their own research, armed with questions.

“It was good to learn that some of the buildings like the Institute for Colored Youth and the Lombard Street Presbyterian Church are standing and have new lives,” Benedict said. “For me, the history is always easier to imagine in person than reading a historic marker.”

On a recent Saturday morning, walkers stared at the mural on the corner of Sixth/ and South Streets, a nod to Du Bois and Engine Company 11, the first firehouse where Black firefighters were stationed. The next stop is an apartment building at Seventh and Lombard, the former home of the Phipps Institute, a TB hospital built in the early 1900s that served as a training ground for Black doctors and nurses.

After walking past the Forten School, the first public elementary school Black children were allowed to go to, we turned down Delancey Street. “Reflecting Revenants” photos are in three houses on the block. Jessie Williams, the owner of one of those houses, chatted with our tour guide.

“What’s thrilling to me is that everybody wants to know the history,” said Williams, who is white. “I feel so gratified that so many people are outside of my door every Saturday morning on this long, cold, tour.”

Smith is pleased with the response to “Legacy Reclaimed.” happy that Philadelphians are walking away understanding Black people’s contributions to American history, because, Smith said, “American history without the context of the Black experience is disingenuous.”

“Legacy Reclaimed: 7th Ward Tribute” will run through Sat. Feb. 24. Tours are free. For more information, log on to the website 7thWardTribute.com