PULLMAN, Wash. — Washington State University’s Compton Union Building Gallery will present “Photography On the Color Line,” an exhibit featuring works by African American writer and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois.
The gallery will host the exhibit from Monday, Feb. 2 through Friday, Feb. 22 as part of the Black History Month celebration.
Du Bois fought racism with empirical evidence of the economic, social and cultural conditions of African Americans. He believed such evidence would challenge the claims of biological race scientists, who proposed that African Americans were inherently inferior to Anglo-Americans. Du Bois said the problems of racism, imperialism and segregation were “the problem of the color line.”
The exhibit displays some of the work compiled for the American Negro Exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Du Bois’ 362 photographs, which depict affluent young African American men and women, were later organized into albums titled “Types of American Negroes, Georgia, U.S.A.” and “Negro Life in Georgia, U.S.A.” The Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division now house the albums.
Exhibit Curator Shawn Michelle Smith is an assistant professor of English and american studies in the department of English. Much of Smith’s research focused on the photographic arts and how gender, race and class are presented in visual culture.
Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. The gallery will be closed Feb. 18 for Presidents’ Day.
For more information, contact Marty Mullen of the gallery at (509) 335-2313 or mullen@wsu.edu.
