The Journey of WEB Du Bois

The Journey of WEB Du Bois

By the early 1920s, Europe had re-emerged as an open and affordable destination for Americans, but travel to the continent remained relatively slow. Days were spent on sea and the ships themselves became important spaces of international encounter and exchange. This image depicts the travels of WEB Du Bois, a leading African American intellectual, attending the Third Pan-African Congress in London and Lisbon in 1923. The publication of the map in the popular African American periodical, The Crisis, reveals how Du Bois’s internationalist politics, embodied in his leading role in the Pan-African Congress movement and as an active commentator on African affairs, was intimately associated with travel. The map depicts Du Bois’s first visit to Africa, despite having written extensively about African Affairs for decades, and shows the trip culminating in Liberia, a country which held an important space in African American consciousness and one of only three independent black sovereignties in the interwar world (the other two being Ethiopia and Haiti). Leaving the 3rd Pan-African Congress in Lisbon on his way to Africa, he described himself as 'a sort of ambassador of Pan-Africa'.

The Crisis, 1924