Will I love W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits?

W.E.B. Du Bois is widely acknowledged as the leading activist for racial equality of his generation. But until very recently little had been known of his deep commitment to the pursuit of equality within and through data technology. As Du Bois was preparing notes for his famous 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, he was also preparing an exposition of what we would today call “infographics” (or what the editors of this volume aptly call “data portraits”) for exhibition at the 1900 Paris Exposition world’s fair. This volume handsomely reproduces for the first time a full-color complete set… show more.

I had read some Du Bois in school; until I learned about this book, I’d had no idea he had created a set of compelling and provocative illustrations of graphs showing the state of Black America at the turn of the 20th century. Du Bois’ information graphics are carefully and elegantly structured to tell a story: he masterfully chose colors, designs, and representations to manage to seem completely objective – while conveying resilience, opportunity, and hope for the future. His work is a masterclass in how visualization can be so much more than a list of numbers.

In the late 1890s, W.E.B. Du Bois was a brilliant young sociologist when he was involved in a project to represent the status of the Afro-American population. This was some 30 years after slavery had been abolished, and his findings were to be exhibited at the World Expo 1900 in Paris. Aside from assembling a wealth of material such as books and photographs, Du Bois turned to statistics and data visualization to provide a broader national lens, and to demonstrate that disadvantage and discrimination still prevailed. Together with a team, he created a highly intriguing series of visualizations that were… show more.