While the exhibition was pretty much ignored by the mainstream US press, it can be seen as very much a milestone in the fight for equal rights. Although separate from the main United States national building of the Paris Exposition, "The Exhibit of American Negroes" occupied one fourth of the total exhibition space allocated to the US in the multinational Palace of Social Economy and Congresses, and an estimated 50 million people passed through during the 7 months it was up. Back home Black periodicals like The Colored American wrote extensively about the project, and no doubt galvanised a new generation of activists. Du Bois himself would go on to rise to national prominence as leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists campaigning for equal rights, and as co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.