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W. E. B. Du Bois

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W. E. B. Du Bois and The Year of Return for African Diaspora

In the heart of Accra, Ghana’s capital, just a few meters from the United States embassy, lie the tombs of W. E. B. Du Bois, a great African-American civil rights leader, and his wife, Shirley.

The founder of the US-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People moved to Accra in 1961, settling in the city’s serene residential area of Labone and living there until his death in August 1963.

President Kwame Nkrumah along with WEB Dubois and Shirley Graham Dubois in Ghana, 1960.

Du Bois’s journey to Ghana may have signaled the emergence of a profound desire among Africans in the diaspora to retrace their roots and return to the continent. Ghana was a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

The W.E.B Du Bois Memorial Center for Pan African Culture

In Washington, D.C., in September 2018, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo declared and formally launched the “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” for Africans in the Diaspora, giving fresh impetus to the quest to unite Africans on the continent with their brothers and sisters in the diaspora.

At that event, President Akufo-Addo said, “We know of the extraordinary achievements and contributions they [Africans in the diaspora] made to the lives of the Americans, and it is important that this symbolic year—400 years later—we commemorate their existence and their sacrifices.”

W. E. B. Du Bois during the ceremony in which he received an honorary degree from the University of Ghana on his 95th birthday, February 23, 1963. Credit: Digital Commonwealth


200 years since the abolition of slavery

US Congress members Gwen Moore of Wisconsin and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, diplomats and leading figures from the African-American community, attended the event.

Representative Jackson Lee linked the Ghanaian government’s initiative with the passage in Congress in 2017 of the 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act.

Provisions in the act include the setting up of a history commission to carry out and provide funding for activities marking the 400th anniversary of the “arrival of Africans in the English colonies at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619.”

Since independence in 1957, successive Ghanaian leaders have initiated policies to attract Africans abroad back to Ghana.

In his maiden independence address, then–Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah sought to frame Africa’s liberation around the concept of Africans all over the world coming back to Africa.

“Nkrumah saw the American Negro as the vanguard of the African people,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard, who first traveled to Ghana when he was 20 and fresh out of Harvard, afire with Nkrumah’s spirit.

“He wanted to be able to utilize the services and skills of African-Americans as Ghana made the transition from colonialism to independence.”

Ghana’s parliament passed a Citizenship Act in 2000 to make provision for dual citizenship, meaning that people of Ghanaian origin who have acquired citizenships abroad can take up Ghanaian citizenship if they so desire.

That same year the country enacted the Immigration Act, which provides for a “Right of Abode” for any “Person of African descent in the Diaspora” to travel to and from the country “without hindrance.”

Du Bois (center) at his 95th birthday party in 1963 in Ghana, with President of the Republic of Ghana Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (right) and First Lady Fathia Nkrumah.

The Joseph Project

In 2007, in its 50th year of independence, the government initiated the Joseph Project to commemorate 200 years since the abolition of slavery and to encourage Africans abroad to return.

Similar to Israel’s policy of reaching out to Jews across Europe and beyond following the Holocaust, the Joseph Project is named for the Biblical Joseph who was sold into slavery in Egypt but would later reunite with his family and rule Egypt.

The African-American community is excited about President Akufo-Addo’s latest initiative. In social media posts, many expressed interest in visiting Africa for the first time.

Among them is Amber Walker, a media practitioner who says that 2019 is the time to visit her ancestral home.

“The paradox of being an African-American is that we occupy spaces where we are not being considered as citizens. So I love the idea of Ghana taking the lead to kind of help African-Americans claim their ancestral space,” she told Africa Renewal. “It is a step in the right direction.

“It is definitely comforting because that kind of red carpet has not been rolled out by our oppressors in the Western world,” she added.

The W.E.B Du Bois Memorial Center for Pan African Culture

In making the announcement, President Akufo-Addo said: “Together on both sides of the Atlantic, we’ll work to make sure that never again will we allow a handful of people with superior technology to walk into Africa, seize their people and sell them into slavery. That must be our resolution, that never again, never again!”

But Walker took issue with Akufo-Addo for appearing to downplay the actions of some Africans in the slave trade.

“In the president’s [Akufo-Addo’s] statement, he sounds like the entire blame is placed on white people coming in with weapons and taking black people away, but that’s not necessarily the history. So I think that needs to be acknowledged,” she said.

She suggested a form of reconciliation such as took place in post-apartheid South Africa—a truth and reconciliation process that will satisfy the millions of Africans whose forefathers were sold into slavery.

 

In 2013 the United Nations declared 2015–2024 the International Decade for People of African Descent to “promote respect, protection and fulfilment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of people of African descent.”

The theme for the ten-year celebration is “People of African descent: recognition, justice and development.”

The “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” will coincide with the biennial Pan African Historical Theatre Festival (Panafest), which is held in Cape Coast, home of Cape Coast Castle and neighbouring Elmina Castle—two notable edifices recognized by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as World Heritage Sites of the slave era.

 

Source: IPS News

Cover image: by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast
10 mins read

(Re)presenting the Color Line as Told By Du Bois’s Data Portraits

Much has been written on W. E. B. Du Bois and the 1900 Paris Exposition, much of it repetitive, lacking new or innovative considerations of what can be explored and how to critically engage further the work of Du Bois and his team.

Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois on an identification card for the 1900 Exposition Universelle (via Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)

The editors – Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert, both scholars at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst – of this present volume W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America, The Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century – on the 150th anniversary year of the scholar’s birth – collects and publishes in a single volume, Du Bois’s attempt at voicing the progress and conditions blacks in the United States at the turn of the century through the charts and graphs of the American Negro Exhibit.

“Assessed value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Georgia Negroes,” from W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Georgia Negro: A Study’ (1900) (via Library of Congress)

They give renewed attention to the possible impacts this (re)production might have on knowledge production and transformation in social science discourse. As they note in the introduction, “this is the first time that the data visualizations are collected together in book form and reproduced in full color” (p. 12). Thus, the volume is an offering and a celebration of the work to remind us of the continued necessity to give voice to the progress and struggle for place in the larger narrative of world history.

“City and rural population. 1890,” from W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Georgia Negro: A Study’ (1900) (via Library of Congress)

 

Before we are allowed to encounter or examine the infographics, there are two short essays by Aldon Morris, the Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University, and Mabel O. Wilson, Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Senior Fellow in the Institute for Research and African American Studies at Columbia University, offering, in part, a history of the 1900 exposition in Paris.

However, considerable departures suggesting other motives, strategies and techniques Du Bois used to complete the exhibit and engage his audience. Moreover, the essays speak to the meaning of his work to the academy and the culture.

Morris suggests that Du Bois’s innovations might inspire an upscaling of research and theorization in contemporary visual sociology, as Wilson focuses primarily on the history and geographic thinking that Du Bois and his team dared to proffer about African Americans on the world stage.

As Morris writes, “The exhibit violated white thoughts about black people, especially Americans only three decades removed from slavery” (p. 24).

Diagram of routes of the African slave trade with the state of Georgia starred, from W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Georgia Negro: A Study’ (1900) (via Library of Congress)

The display in and of itself was a challenge to white supremacy and calls for continued growth and uplift of African people. Wilson discusses Du Bois’s use cartography (“Western methods”) as a way of “inscribing the black world back into history and geography.” The display of the infographics in such a manner, tackling such subjects with such a radicalized visual voice, is consequential of Du Bois having been among the top social scientists of the day, as Morris asserts.

“Occupations of negroes and whites in Georgia,” from W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Georgia Negro: A Study’ (1900) (via Library of Congress)

The essays sufficiently guide, or better, give us a proper footing with which to examine the diagrams and charts introduced by Silas Munro, Assistant Professor at the Otis College of Art and Design. Munro, as did Morris and Wilson, discusses Du Bois’s innovations with using the “visual form to make arguments for the equality and sophistication of black Americans living under Jim Crow and the shadow of enslavement” (p. 46), and his place in the overall history of data visualization techniques.

It is noted that although the exhibit was award winning, it was not successful in impacting the audience in attendance, given the lack of discussion of the African American exhibit in the newspapers, at home and abroad.

“The rise of the negroes from slavery to freedom in one generation,” from W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Georgia Negro: A Study’ (1900) (via Library of Congress)

However, we find here in Munro’s introduction that Du Bois and his students’ graphics might have influenced the rise of artistic movements and the use of data visualizations in Europe and Russia. Munro noted, “The colors, shapes, and typography of the charts also foreshadow critical developments in the history of data visualization, including simplified pictographic form defined in the Isotype picture language, minimal typographic palettes used by the International Typographic Style, and visual narratives in chart form explained in the research of Edward Tufte” (p. 47 & 49).

A series of statistical charts illustrating the condition of the descendants of former African slaves now in residence in the United States of America. Drawing, ca. 1900.

As such, the (re)presentation of the The Georgia Negro: A Social Study by W. E. B. Du Bois follows with a descriptive blurb for each graphic also by Munro. Munro’s descriptions are sufficient; however, of those that he cannot describe and struggle to find meaning is more indicative of the need for a return to Du Bois’s infographics. Inquiries are needed to decipher, explain, and, perhaps, replicate these findings in scientific investigations.

“Slaves and free negroes,” graphed between 1790 and 1870, from W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Georgia Negro: A Study’ (1900) (via Library of Congress)

Battle-Baptiste and Rusert conclude their introductory chapter discussing the intellectual impacts of the graphics used for the American Negro exhibit, writing “While we can’t know what future plans Du Bois had for the infographics, we do know that they might take on a new life today, from inspiring forms of design and art-making connected to social justice work to their traction within digital projects and other initiatives that are, like Du Bois and his collaborators, envisioning how data might be re-imagined as a form of accountability and even protest in the age of Black Lives Matter” (p. 22).

Then, this offering of the data portraits at this time is a call to contemporary scholars in the academy to study and engage Du Bois’s methods deeply for improved analyses, meaning making, and social action toward the improvement of the lives of people of African descent as Du Bois intended.

 

Contributed by Weckea Dejura Lilly

Mr. Lilly is a Research Archivist at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. In his free time, he experiments with writing short stories and (auto)biographical essays.