This image is part of the W.E.B. DuBois collection of albums of photographs of African Americans in Georgia, exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.

In the 1890 U.S. Census, African Americans comprised almost 12% of the country's population, 7.4 million out of 62.9 million. The young woman in the photograph appears to be reading for pleasure. But many other Americans were motivated to gain reading skills in order to pass literacy tests required for voter registration.

Between 1890 and 1910, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia and Oklahoma passed state laws that required citizens to demonstrate their ability to read and understand texts. Election officials decided who passed and who failed the requirements. As a result, millions of Americans were denied their constitutional right, guaranteed in the 15th Amendment, to vote.

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois, graduated from Harvard with his Ph.D in 1895. His doctoral thesis was on the slave trade. He taught for more than a dozen years at Atlanta University, chided Booker T. Washington for being too conservative and founded the Crisis magazine, which he edited from 1910 to 1934.

DuBois also organized college students and others into the Niagara Movement and he helped found the NAACP.

DuBois penned novels, essays and sociological studies during the first 60 years of the 20th century. In The Souls of Black Folk, he reported about "this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . .one feels his twoness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled striving's."

1962, he renounced his American citizenship and moved to Ghana and died a year later.

Medium : 1 photographic print : gelatin silver

Created/Published : 1899 or 1900

Creator : Not attributed

Part of the W.E.B. DuBois collection of photographs housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: cph3b11189