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  "path": "/links/color-line-web-du-bois-1900-paris-exposition",
  "publishedAt": "2026-02-21T05:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://jonathanstephens.us",
  "tags": [
    "W.e.b. Dubois",
    "The Color Line",
    "Black History",
    "Racism",
    "Jim Crow",
    "United States History",
    "Critical Race Theory",
    "African American",
    "Biography",
    "Infographics"
  ],
  "textContent": "> The separation of the “American Negro Exhibit” from the other US displays fit its purpose. Devoting an exhibit specifically to Black Americans suggested that they, indeed, constituted a separate society. In Du Bois’s words, the infographics made up “an honest, straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by themselves.” The “Americanness” of the Blacks depicted was unquestionable. But given that Black people had started their journey outside the American polity and were still kept from full participation in it, seeing them as a nation within a nation made perfect sense.\n\n> Du Bois claimed cartography, statistics, and science in general for African-Americans. The exhibit, with its presentation of information about Black prosperity and education—one graph showed that illiteracy rates among Black Americans were lower than those of Romanians, Serbians, and Russians—scored points without having to belabor them. Although the emphasis was on achievement, Du Bois did not want to paint too rosy a picture of Black Americans’ circumstances. He hand-copied Georgia’s various codes pertaining to slavery and Jim Crow to accompany the images of success, essentially saying, This is what we have been able to do in the face of legalized opposition to our advancement.",
  "title": "The Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois at the 1900 Paris Exposition"
}