“[H]ouse with picket fence, man and dog seated on porch and a dog lying on the sidewalk,” Georgia, ca. 1899, photographer unknown, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
This photo was in one of the several albums depicting African-American life that W. E. B. Du Bois compiled to exhibit at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair.
Click on the image for a little better view.
A fenced-in backyard in Georgia, ca. 1899, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
These photos were included in one of several albums depicting African American life, which were compiled by W. E. B. Du Bois for the 1900 Paris Exposition.
There’s a brief history of the American backyard here. Until the 20th century, it was a space for work, not recreation.
While he was a professor of sociology at Atlanta University, W. E. B. Du Bois compiled 363 photographs of African American life in Georgia into several albums — which he displayed at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.
The pictures* here, taken in 1899 or 1900, were part of his collection. Click on any thumbnail in the gallery to scroll through larger photos.
Du Bois’s exhibited albums particularly featured middle-class African Americans and their homes and institutions, and dozens of fine individual portraits were included.
“The photographs of affluent young African American men and women challenged the scientific ‘evidence’ and popular racist caricatures of the day that ridiculed and sought to diminish African American social and economic success,” according to the Library of Congress’s online catalogue.
In 2003, the Library of Congress published a book of 150 of the images, entitled A Small Nation of People. You can listen to a good NPR interview with its co-author, historian Deborah Willis, here. In it, she mentions porches being photographed for the exhibit, as places “central to family gatherings.”
*All via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
enclos*ure 