★ Plate No. I · Volume I · The Du Bois Reappraisal ★

The Education of the
Negro, 1900 → 2026

L'éducation des Nègres aux États-Unis, 1900 à 2026
Student Enrollment in Institutions of Higher Learning
◆ 1900
after W.E.B. Du Bois · Paris Exposition
Negro students in colleges United States, circa 1900 1900 ~2,000 [ this bar drawn to scale against 1900 figures only ] the reappraisal at right shows 126 years of growth at the same baseline scale
In 1900 Du Bois estimated roughly 2,000 Negro students enrolled in colleges in the United States at any one time — a figure he presented as Plate 25 of the American Negro Exhibit at the Paris Exposition. He had been the seventh Black PhD in the nation in 1895.
◆ 1900 – 2020
after Mike Spade · Radical Imagination, 2026
Negro students enrolled, 1900 to 2020 a thousandfold in a century and a quarter 1900 ~2,000 1950 ~100,000 1970 ~500,000 1990 ~1,250,000 2010 ~3,000,000 2020 ~2,300,000 0 3,000,000 ( the same baseline scale as the 1900 plate at left )
In 2010 the enrolled population peaked at roughly three million students — a thousandfold increase from Du Bois's 1900 baseline. The 2020 figure reflects a retraction of nearly 700,000 from that peak.

★ The Underlying Data ★

Year Approx. enrolled Source note
1900 ~2,000 Du Bois, The College-Bred Negro (Atlanta University Publications, 1900); reproduced as Plate 25 of the American Negro Exhibit
1950 ~100,000 NCES historical series; pre-1976 figures synthesized from IPEDS and Census IPUMS
1970 ~500,000 Post-Civil Rights Act growth period; NCES historical series
1990 ~1,250,000 NCES Digest of Education Statistics, Table 306.10
2010 ~3,000,000 Peak enrollment; NCES Digest of Education Statistics, Table 306.10
2020 ~2,300,000 NCES Digest of Education Statistics, Table 306.10 (2022 edition)

Method Note

This plate extends Du Bois's 1900 methodology — count, visualize, present to the world — to the same subject one hundred and twenty-six years later. The visual grammar preserves Du Bois's plate-mount conventions: hand-drawn double border, Libre Caslon italic titles in English and French, geometric bars, the Du Bois 1900 palette (ink, blue, green, gold, red). The data is rendered at a single consistent scale so that the 1900 baseline and the 2020 figure share the same axis; in 1900 the bar is effectively a hairline next to the 2010 peak.

This is a preview plate for conversation, drafted April 11, 2026. The values above are approximate to within roughly 10% for the illustrative years shown. The production plate for The Du Bois Reappraisal, Volume I, 2026 will source exact figures from NCES Digest of Education Statistics Table 306.10 for 1976 forward, and from IPEDS / Census IPUMS / The College-Bred Negro (Du Bois, 1900) for pre-1976 years. No figure in the production plate will be uncited. Any number that cannot be cited to a primary source will not appear.