While Du Bois\u2019s legacy is cemented in American history, his data visualizations remain relatively unknown. I\u2019m passionate about Du Bois\u2019s story and have been discussing it via a series of articles through the lens of a UX Designer working in data visualization. My hope is that these posts inspire more academics, designers, and data visualization specialists to explore this work further in order to place the work into the proper historical significance it deserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The word \u201cNegro\u201d will appear frequently in this series. It\u2019s not a word I take lightly. It is the term Du Bois references throughout this phase of his career and I think it\u2019s best to honor and contextualize his use of language for this article.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I began this series it was spring, and now as I finish it, the shadows grow longer and autumn is slipping into winter. So too is the story-arch of \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes.\u201d It is a story rich in promise with significant accomplishments, but ultimately, slips into darkness. It\u2019s an amazing story.<\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s 1899 and a century of unprecedented change is coming to an end. The very term \u2018science\u2019 was invented in 1833 and the impact of scientific invention was omnipresent across cultures. Profound social change was underway and slavery was greatly reduced on a global scale. The painful mid-century Civil War in the United States reshaped the young country and brought about the 13th Amendment<\/a> which abolished slavery in 1865.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result of Reconstruction<\/a>, many former slaves were now granted unprecedented rights under the 14th Amendment<\/a>. At the same time, many racist lawmakers gained power across the southern states and Jim Crow laws<\/a> began to radically roll back these rights under the guise of \u201cseparate but equal\u201d segregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outraged at the racist displays found in the 1893 Chicago and 1895 Atlanta Expositions, lawyer Thomas Calloway sends a letter to hundreds of African-American leaders across the country:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo the Paris Exposition\u2026 thousands upon thousands will go\u2026 a well selected and prepared exhibit, representing the Negro\u2019s development\u2026 will attract attention\u2026 and do a great and lasting good in convincing thinking people of the possibilities of the Negro.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n The leaders rally to his call and decide that an exhibit will be created under the direction of the brilliant young sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and will present the very best of African-American life and culture. $15,000 in funding is unanimously passed by Congress and signed by President Mckinley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What follows is a frenzy of activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In just 4 months, prominent citizens, educators, and students across the country begin to assemble the materials. \u201cThe five great negro schools\u201d: Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Hampton and Tuskegee Universities prepare exhibits. The assistant librarian of Congress, Daniel Murray, collects more than a thousand books and pamphlets by Negro authors while Du Bois and his students conduct a sociological study in Georgia and draft the 60+ charts. War heroes are documented. Businesses, churches and black newspapers from across the country send in photographs of their finest and best. 400 patents are collected. As a subtle nod to systematic prejudice, Du Bois hand-writes over 400 pages documenting the Black Codes<\/a>. As a final touch, a bronze sculpture of Frederick Douglass is included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pulitzer prize-winning scholar David Levering Lewis in the book A Small Nation of People<\/a> writes about the effort: \u201cThe Negro exhibit at Paris was a racial imperative, a momentous opportunity and obligation to set the great white world straight about black people.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The resulting exhibition was a targeted attempt to sway the world\u2019s elite to acknowledge the American Negro in an effort to influence cultural change in the USA from abroad. David Levering Lewis continues \u201cIn many ways, The Negro Exhibit\u2026 represented the last hurrah of men and women of culture and accomplishment who still aspired to full citizenship rights regardless of color.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n After working tirelessly on the exhibit for months, Du Bois was \u201cthreatened with nervous prostration\u2026 and had little money left to buy passage to Paris\u201d \u2014 <\/em>but arrived just in time. He quickly sets up the exhibit in time for the judging, despite missing some of the materials from the Universities, but the judges still recognize the Exhibit by awarding it several prizes including an overall Grand Prix and Du Bois a special Gold medal.<\/p>\n\n\n While the exhibit was praised by officials and the Paris Exposition as a whole broke attendance records, the direct impact of \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes\u201d is hard to measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the African-American press reported on the exhibit with gleeful excitement and enthusiasm, the European media only moderately mentioned the effort \u2014 and only then as a small element of the massive Exposition. The white American press, however, completely ignored the exhibit and the American public at large remained unaware of the \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Levering Lewis writes about the poignant aftermath of the exhibit: \u201cWhat Du Bois and Calloway had wanted to demonstrate to the world about the progress and promise of people of color in America had become almost an epistemic impossibility for the majority of their white countrywomen and -men by the dawn of the twentieth century. For, just as a significant percentage of Du Bois small nation of people stood ready to walk onto the world stage as aspiring, able, even assimilated, participants in the social contract, a peculiarly American version of white supremacy twinned with [master race] democracy, consigned all black people to the shadowy margins of the national life where their invisibility would long remain indispensable to the identity of white people.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the work by Du Bois, Calloway, and the extended community to show off the best of what African-Americans had to offer, the exhibit was met with indifference as the exhibition had failed to bring about social change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This brings me to the biggest question that I\u2019ve been considering since I began this project:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes\u201d is both inspiring in its brilliance and originality, and tragic in its overlooked state \u2014 barely even a footnote in history. While writing and thinking about this work, I have developed a few thoughts as to why this work is just not better known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As discussed at the close of my last article<\/a>, Du Bois chanced upon the actual remains of Sam Hose<\/a> who was lynched by a crowd of hundreds, his body was ripped apart and distributed around the state. It shook Du Bois to the core. In the face of such violent hatred, Du Bois realized science just wasn\u2019t enough:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTwo considerations thereafter broke in upon my work and eventually disrupted it: first, one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved; and secondly, there was no such definite demand for scientific work of the sort I was doing\u2026<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Had the exhibit caught the attention of the European press, maybe Du Bois would have made a name for himself as a sociologist instead of a social activist, and the \u201cDu Bois Spiral<\/a>\u201d would be considered equivalent to Florence Nightingale\u2019s \u201ccoxcomb<\/a>\u201d in historic significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After his return from Paris, Du Bois became increasingly disenchanted with social science \u2014 especially in the face of violence and racism. Toward the end of his life he reflects<\/a> on his change of heart, writing: \u201cSo far as the American world of science and letters was concerned, we never \u2018belonged\u2019; we remained unrecognized in learned societies and academic groups. We rated merely as Negroes studying Negroes, and after all, what had Negroes to do with America or science?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Recognized social theorist Patricia Hill Collins argues<\/a> that \u201cdifferent versions of a logic of segregation shaped all aspects of American society, including American sociology\u201d. <\/em>While Gurminder Bhambra, in his article<\/a> outlines the stark reality: \u201cthe lack of attention given to alternative traditions of thought within the metropole has tended to elide the colonial past and drown out other voices\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In studying the Negro, Du Bois simply explored a subject that White America just didn\u2019t care about \u2014 especially at the dawn of the twentieth century. Despite his academic pedigree and exhaustive rigor, Du Bois\u2019s work was largely ignored by white academia which left his work underexposed. Certainly calls for re-exploring Du Bois\u2019s sociological importance have been regularly called for over the years, but only in the past decade can his impact be felt more clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just last month Harvard University hosted a symposium<\/a> to discuss Du Bois\u2019s impact on sociology. The lectures and panels retraced his rise to prominence, discussed his methodical practices, and Du Bois\u2019s importance in the world today. Indeed, as you can see to the left, the \u2018Du Bois spiral\u2019 is the leitmotif of the conference \u2014 an icon of hand-made progress and precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back at his time in Paris and as a social scientist, Du Bois recalls<\/a> the very real needs of those trying to break through to a larger audience:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere had I failed? There were many answers, but one was typically American, as the event proved; I did the deed but I did not advertise it… in the long run Advertising without the Deed was the only lasting value. Perhaps Americans do not realize how completely they have adopted this philosophy. But Madison Avenue does<\/em>.<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Three years later Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk<\/em>. It was a different kind of book than what Du Bois had previously published, one that married Negro culture to current events and history but with a palpable anger that demanded attention. Du Bois struck a deliberately non-scientific tone in the book, using fragments of Negro spirituals to illustrate his point rather than data visualizations. His change of approach worked and the book\u2019s emotional appeal and intellectual brilliance was able to connect with a global audience bringing Du Bois the attention he sought and deserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Du Bois begins the first series of charts with the now famous phrase: \u201cThe problem of the 20th-Century is the problem of the color line.\u201d It is a statement he used in his speech at the First Pan-African Conference in London that same year, and it is also included in the introduction of The Souls of Black Folk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In crafting an exhibit exploring the excellence of the 19th-century Negro, Du Bois assembled the most definitive counter-argument to Booker T. Washington\u2019s Atlanta Compromise<\/a> of 1895. His passionate refutation of Washington in The Souls of Black Folk<\/em> set Du Bois on a path that eventually establishes him as the leader of the Niagara Movement<\/a>, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People<\/a> (NAACP) in 1909.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His tireless activism, lectures, and books saw him to be a central figure in global politics. A renowned figure hosted by world leaders, perpetually independent (and controversial), Du Bois was a socialist, then a communist, and eventually expatriated to Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He died on August 27, 1963 \u2014 the day before the famous civil rights March on Washington<\/a>. Roy Wilkins<\/a>, a civil-rights leader who had worked with Du Bois at the NAACP, announced Du Bois\u2019s death at the march and asked for a moment of silence:<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cRegardless of the fact that in his later years Dr. Du Bois chose another path, it is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the twentieth century his was the voice that was calling you to gather here today in this cause. If you want to read something that applies to 1963 go back and get a volume of The Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois, published in 1903.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The Civil Rights Act<\/a>, was enacted the year after Du Bois\u2019s death. It outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and prohibits unequal application of voter registration, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. The rights that Du Bois had fought his entire life for were finally a reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As history is being rewritten to be more inclusive, Du Bois\u2019s innovations in statistical chart-making deserve an equal place in the history of data visualization as well. As his influence triggers new research efforts, so should his work inspire new methods for visual communication.<\/p>\n\n\n A major advancement in the cause of exposing Du Bois\u2019s work to a wider audience can be seen in the new book \u201cW. E. B. Du Bois\u2019s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America<\/a>.\u201d Co-edited by Britt Rusert and Whitney Battle-Baptiste with essays by Aldon Morris, Mabel O. Wilson, and Silas Munro, the book discusses Du Bois\u2019s work predominantly from an African-American studies perspective and includes annotated prints of all the charts in the collection of the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With every new article, the story of \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes\u201d continues to spread Du Bois\u2019s daring, brilliance and vision. Hopefully his work will inspire historians, data journalists and designers to continue to challenge the conventions of the world around them by telling stories with data in new and innovative ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll end with a quote from Du Bois\u2019s Autobiography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn mountain and valley, in home and school, I met men and women as I had never met them before. Slowly they became, not white folks, but folks. The unity beneath all life clutched me. I was not less fanatically a Negro, but \u201cNegro\u201d meant a greater, broader sense of humanity and world fellowship. I felt myself standing, not against the world, but simply against American narrowness and color prejudice, with the greater, finer world at my back.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is almost the end of the series, and as I have written before, it\u2019s been a surprising journey. In the final article in this series I\u2019ll discuss an extremely exciting discovery<\/strong> that I\u2019ve made and in addition, I\u2019ll list all the charts in sequence and even supply links to the majority of my research materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The six-part series:<\/p>\n\n\n\n An introduction<\/a> to the 1900 Paris Exposition, and context for a few charts on history and population growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Places this body of work within Du Bois\u2019 larger sociological focus and continues the exploration<\/a> of many of the charts from the exposition with a focus on education, literacy, and occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A detailed examination of how Du Bois drafted his charts, a consideration of this work as a precursor to modernism, and a discussion of his more artistic charts on land ownership and value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Discoveries on viewing an original chart and further exploration of Du Bois\u2019 more innovative designs dealing with occupation, business, and mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Discusses Du Bois\u2019s body of work and his frustrations with social science despite widespread attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To close out the series I present a previously unknown chart from the series, and discuss the importance of understanding the sequence of the works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This article originally appeared in Medium but in moving to NightingaleDVS.com, I edited the original text mostly to update some grammar and language substitutions, January 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\n\n\nThe Story of \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes\u201d<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Why don\u2019t more people know about Du Bois\u2019s data visualizations?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
1. The Exhibit did not bring about social change.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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2. Prejudice in the Sociological community obscured Du Bois\u2019s importance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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3. As racism became more vicious, Du Bois became more outspoken<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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4. A small chapter in a massive career<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Acknowledging the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nW. E. B. Du Bois\u2019 staggering Data Visualizations are as powerful today as they were in 1900 <\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
II. Data Journalism and the Scientific Study of \u201cThe Negro Problem\u201d<\/a> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
III. Exploring the Craft and Design of W.E.B. Du Bois\u2019 Data Visualizations<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
IV. Style and Rich Detail: On Viewing an Original Du Bois Chart<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
V. Du Bois as Social Scientist and the Legacy of \u201cThe Exhibit of American Negroes\u201d<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VI. The Exhibition as a Whole: an Exciting Discovery<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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