“I do not wonder that you have had a little difficulty in keeping up with us.”
—W.E.B. Du Bois, Letter to Anna Melissa Graves, November 7, 1960¹

The map is disabled on this page for mobile and tablet viewing because the screens are too small for interactive engagement. We are working on a mobile alternative. For the most complete experience, view the map on a desktop or laptop in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari (v.17.6 or later). The map can also be accessed directly at ArcGIS Online.

The Map

This interactive map, built in ArcGIS, follows W.E.B. Du Bois’s movements in the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Each point marks a location where Du Bois lived, visited, worked, lectured, or organized, based on archival and secondary source research. Together, these journeys illuminate his global vision — linking Black freedom struggles in the United States with anti-colonial movements across Africa, Asia, and the world. The basemap omits political borders to highlight Du Bois’s travels across regions whose boundaries shifted throughout his lifetime — a product of colonialism and decolonization — emphasizing continuity and connection rather than fixed national divisions.

Sources

Du Bois GPS includes data for 700+ places Du Bois traveled during his lifetime. The full dataset includes 10,000 data points describing Du Bois’s presence in these locations as well as others that we do not visualize here because we have not sufficiently verified details or multiple sources offer conflicting information.

The data derives from the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and secondary sources, compiled and verified by Roopika Risam and the Global Du Bois research team at Dartmouth College. Citations are included in tooltips and in the database view.

Exploring the Interface

Click on the play button in the time slider at the bottom of the screen to see an animation of Du Bois’s travels over time. Move the time slider to a specific year to see where Du Bois was at that point in time, or move the time slider to the end to see all data points at once. If the time slider is closed, open it by clicking on the clock icon in the lefthand toolbar.

Control buttons (+,-) are also available in the lefthand toolbar to zoom in for a closer look at a particular area of the map. Hover or click on any point to learn when and why Du Bois was in that location. On the tooltip that appears, click on the dock button to the right of the title to expand. Use the home button in the lefthand toolbar to reset the map to the default map area. To view the map in full screen, click on the expand icon in the lefthand toolbar.

Find locations using the search button (magnifying glass icon) in the righthand toolbar. To view the database, click on the layer list button directly under the search, then click on the table icon to the right of the layer name. Export and sharing options are also located on the right.

Users can pin a location on the map to track locations of interest. Pins will be saved only in this browser for a limited time. They will not affect the shared version of the map or other users’ experiences. Personal pins should automatically appear when returning to this page, as will last viewing settings. Clearing the browser cache or using another device will reset them.

Contribute to the Dataset

Know of a location that should be added to the map, supported by archival or secondary sources? We’d love to hear from you and will credit your contribution — please email Roopika Risam.

Notes

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, Letter to Anna Melissa Graves, November 7, 1960, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst. ↩︎