In Toni Morrison's "Tar Baby" (1981), butler Sidney Childs describes himself and his origins with a reference to a book: "I am a Phil-a-delphia Negro mentioned in the book of the very same name." Written around 80 years before the period in the 1970s when the novel is set, that book is "The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study", by W. E. B. DuBois (1899), a study of the lives of African Americans in Philadelphia. In "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903), DuBois introduced the concept of "double consciousness". But in "Tar Baby", Sidney continues with an understanding of his genealogy that resists such doubleness: "My people owned drugstores and taught school." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 May 2025)