W.E.B. Du Bois, A Sociologist And A Curator

Only thirty-five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Paris called the nations together for a grand Exposition. In the American Pavillion was an exhibition of 500 carefully selected photos. The “American Negro Exhibit”, curated by W.E. B. Du Bois, was intended to counter the notion that American blacks were all the victims of racism—poor and uneducated.

Most of the photos showed middle- and upper-class subjects dressed in their finest for their portraits. The Library of Congress has created and published a book of those images titled A Small Nation of People, by David Levering Lewis and Deborah Willis. You can also view the photographs online at the Library of Congress.

Dentistry at Howard University, Washington, D.C. ca. 1900, collected by W.E.B. Du Bois and Thomas J. Calloway, no caption card on file.