As the world prepared for the Exposition Universalle de 1900 in Paris, W. E. B. Du Bois was approached to help represent African American life. He came with a cache of stunning photographs to illustrate the progress of Negroes in America -- thereby offering a photographic counterpoint to the prolific stereotyping of blacks that left viewers awestruck.
With insights from Pulitzer Prize winner David Levering Lewis and Mac-Arthur Fellow photo historian Deborah Willis, A Small Nation of People presents more than one hundred and fifty of these important photographs together for the first time since their initial unveiling. Here is an incredible treasure trove of illustrations of African Americans in front of their new businesses, universities, and homes -- sometimes modest, sometimes elegant. Here, too, are beautiful Victorian-era portraits of blacks whose varied hues show how diverse black Americans truly were. Viewed together, the collection reveals in glorious detail what Du Bois saw -- a small nation of people prepared to make their mark on America.

A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress

Arts & Photography

Deborah Willis

David Levering Lewis

History & Criticism

Amistad

Girlfriend on Mars

Penguin Canada

Hamish Hamilton

Hardcover, 320 pages with many photographs

Black, A Celebration of a Culture

Photography & Video

Hylas Publishing

Why were women far more likely than men to be executed for witchcraft in the early modern period? Questioning approaches that focus narrowly on the male role in witch-hunting in England and Scotland, Deborah Willis examines the fact that women were also frequently the accusers.Willis draws on the strengths of feminist, new historicist, and psychoanalytic criticism and on such primary sources as legal documents, pamphlet literature, religious tracts, and stage plays. Both the witch and her female accuser, Willis concludes, were engaged in a complex, intricate struggle for survival and empowerment in a patriarchal culture, and they stood in uneasy relation to definitions of female identity that rewarded nurturing behavior.Malevolent Nurture disentangles popular images of the witch from those endorsed by male elites. Among villagers, the witch was most typically imagined as a malevolent mother, while elites preferred to view her as a betraying servant of Satan. Analyzing King James VI and I's involvement in the North Berwick witchcraft trials, Willis shows how his elite atittudes were nevertheless influenced by his relationships with his brith mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and another maternal figure, Queen Elizabeth I.Willis also shows that Shakespeare, in Richard III, Macbeth, and Henry VI, and other middle-class playwrights incorporated the beliefs of the ruling class and villagers alike in their representations of witches.

Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England

Literature & Fiction

British & Irish

Cornell University Press

72 pages; 33 color and b&amp;w photographic plates; 11 x 8.5 inches. Includes an interview with the artist, a biography, bibliography, etc.

Lorna Simpson (Untitled 54)

Andy Grundberg

Lorna Simpson

Friends of Photography Bookstore

All Power: Visual Legacies of The Black Panther Party

Michelle Dunn Thomas Hank Willis

Rene´ De Guzman Marsh

Minor Matters Books

Period pictures depict segregated communities

Visual Journal: Harlem and D.C. in the Thirties and Forties

Deborah Willis-Thomas

Jane Lusaka

Smithsonian

A celebration of African-American culture, vividly captured in more than 500 stunning photographs. Black, A Celebration of a Culture, presents the vibrant panorama of 20th-century black culture in America and around the world in more than 500 photographs from the turn of the last century to the present day. Each photograph, hand-picked by Deborah Willis, America's leading historian of African-American photography, celebrates the world of music, art, fashion, sports, family, worship or play. From Saturday night parties to Sunday morning worship, Jessie Owens to Barry Bonds, Ella Fitzgerald to Halle Berry, Black: A Celebration of a Culture is joyous and inspiring.

Black: A Celebration of a Culture

Hylas Pub

Serpent's Tail

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Books by Deborah Willis