Black Lives 1900: W.E.B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition

Margaret Busby

"This is an extraordinary book – an arrestingly beautiful combination of photographs and graphics."

Author of "White Girls" and staff writer at The New Yorker

Hilton Als

I find this lush and exquisitely produced book essential to my understanding of a historical event that did much to change my perception of DuBois, and his brilliant expansiveness. It's marvelous to have this "lost" material between covers now, and forever.

New Yorker

Hua Hsu

Rothenstein seeks to emphasize the relevance of Du Bois’s work through juxtaposition: materials from the original exhibition are interspersed with excerpts from Du Bois’s own writings and more... These interstitial selections seem intended to conjure a continuum of black voices, or perhaps to argue that the insurmountable prejudices of Du Bois’s day linger in the present.

It's Nice That

Laura Snoad

Focussing on the set of 63 infographics Du Bois presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition, [the book] shows the pioneering graphs, charts and maps Du Bois developed with a team of African American students from his sociology laboratory at Atlanta University to radically challenge racism and the arguments behind white supremacy.

Guardian

Sukhdev Sandhu

A handsome new book that tells a lesser-known but fascinating story about the 1900 fair: the staging of the American Negro Exhibit at the grand Palace of Social Economy.

LitHub

Jacqueline Francis

Shattered myths about Black America...

Bookforum

Ciaran Finlayson

Thematic and poetic pairings... By recovering [W.E.B. Du Bois's] mode of presentation—illustrating impersonal forces besides portraits of individuals, their homes and their workplaces—this volume gives further evidence, if such is still needed, of Du Bois's rich dialectical method.

Galerie

Charles Caesar

contains reproduction of the images taken by mostly anonymous photographers showing the changing status of a newly emancipated people across America.

Aperture

Jovonna Jones

A Visual Record of Black Lives, Four Decades After Emancipation.

Dazed

Miss Rosen

A striking selection of photographs, cutting-edge infographics, books, pamphlets, and unique objects illustrating African-America achievements in the years following emancipation. DuBois’ graphs of Black accomplishment, not intended as art, prefigure the movement towards abstract art by decades, though they went unrecognised as such until recent times.

Galerie

Lucy Rees

With an assortment of hand-drawn charts, maps, graphs, and photographs taken by anonymous photographers, he shed light on the status of newly emancipated people across America—a powerful affirmation of the equal rights of Black Americans.

Cartographic Perspectives

Krystle Harrell

Black Lives 1900: W. E. B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition beautifully weaves together Du Bois’s groundbreaking graphic visualizations with photographs of Black Americans post-slavery, to tell the little-known story of The American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 World’s Fair...this book is a timely reminder of what Black Americans can achieve in the face of oppression, as well as a somber reminder that even though “the twentieth century” is over, “the problem of the color line” is not yet solved.

Washington Post

David A. Taylor

A beautifully illustrated volume based on [...] the Paris Exposition of 1900 that presented Black Americans in their own words and images.

Third Coast Review

Patrick T. Reardon

These charts and graphics, and photos, from more than a century ago, have deep resonance today amid the Black Lives Matter movement and the vitriol of its opponents.