A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress

by David Levering Lewis, Deborah Willis

As the world prepared for the Exposition Universalle de 1900 in Paris, W. E. B. Du Bois was approached to help represent African American life. He came with a cache of stunning photographs to illustrate the progress of Negroes in America -- thereby offering a photographic counterpoint to the prolific stereotyping of blacks that left viewers awestruck. With insights from Pulitzer Prize winner David Levering Lewis and Mac-Arthur Fellow photo historian Deborah Willis, A Small Nation of People presents more than one hundred and fifty of these important photographs together for the first time since their initial unveiling. Here is an incredible treasure trove of illustrations of African Americans in front of their new businesses, universities, and homes -- sometimes modest, sometimes elegant. Here, too, are beautiful Victorian-era portraits of blacks whose varied hues show how diverse black Americans truly were. Viewed together, the collection reveals in glorious detail what Du Bois saw -- a small nation of people prepared to make their mark on America.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, African American, Photography, Art

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

David Levering Lewis is the Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History Emeritus at New York University.

Reviews

[Muhammad · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the equivalent of being able to look at a bunch of social media pages from 100 years ago. Mostly photographs with the essays to put them into context. This was from the American Negro Exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1900. It would have never took place without W.E.B. DuBois. Thank you ancestor. To see what life was like at this period is crucial.

"Before the pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song... the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness ... the third, a gift of the spirit. Around us the history of the land has centered for thrice a hundred years."
—W. E. B. DU BOIS,

"There must come a loftier respect for the sovereign human soul that seeks to know itself and the world about it; that seeks a freedom for expansion and self-development; that will love and hate and labor in its own way, untrammeled alike by old and new. Such souls aforetime have inspired and guided worlds."
—W. E. B. DU BOIS,
The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

[T.R. Ormond · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent survey of many of the photographs included in W.E.B. Du Bois's Exposition des Nègres d'Amerique at the 1900 Paris Exposition. The "Introduction" and essays by David Levering Lewis and Deborah Willis offer engaging and informative introductions to the history behind the creation of Du Bois's archive and the other collaborators. Of particular note is Deborah Willis's essay "The Sociologist's Eye" which examines the photographs from the angle of sociology, Du Bois's field, and places the photos in the context of the visual battleground of the time. Essentially, these photos sought to construct the idea of the "New Negro" (using the terminology of Booker T. Washington) and to destroy negative stereotypes about African Americans that prevailed in white America and Europe at the time.

[Dacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect this to be mostly pictures, but I liked it. The essays were great and I loved looking at the pictures.