Book Report: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits

The creation of “data portraits” by W.E.B. Du Bois and his team, were supposed to be proof. Beautifully represented data demonstrating the progress of black development in a recently emancipated United States. Du Bois’s work for, “The Exhibit of American Negros” featured at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, won Grand Prix and a gold medal, yet until recently, it remained largely unknown. 

As a young, white man writing about Black History, I can’t help but wonder, who am I to speak on such a topic? I can’t relate. I can try, but I’ll never be able to full understand. Design, however, is a topic where I’m a bit more comfortable. And it is at the intersection of design and Black History, where this story takes place.

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, born in Massachusetts in 1868, came to Atlanta University in 1897, after studies at Fisk University, abroad in Berlin, and becoming the first black man to graduate with a PhD from Harvard University. Du Bois once described Atlanta, “South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills, peering out from the shadows of the past into the promise of the future.”

A professor of history, sociology and economics, Du Bois and his Atlanta University team conducted a census of the Negro population in Georgia. Former southern slaves had only been free for a short time, and no one had ever collected data on their lifestyles and accomplishments as equals. The study (apart from its Paris accolades) was the first of its kind in the history of the United States.

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“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, the question as to how far differences of race–which show themselves chiefly in the color of the skin and the texture of the hair–will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.”

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Du Bois once said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, the question as to how far differences of race–which show themselves chiefly in the color of the skin and the texture of the hair–will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.” W.E.B. often spoke about the color line and used this work to prove his point.

With limited funding, he collaborated with male and female Atlanta University students to compile the research, as well as create a system of visualizing the data. Information that, I imagine at the time, might have been difficult to process.

Completely made my hand, the 63 charts combined strong typography, bold colors, lines and abstract shapes, and an overall hierarchy and gestalt. These charts predate well-known art movements like De Stijl and Bauhaus. And with the charts making it to Europe in 1900, you have to imagine they had some sort of influence. The plates now live in the Library of Congress. They were among the first of their kind in what we would now simply call, “infographics.” Using design, Du Bois turned the data into something most beautiful and interesting, that is still regarded as a work of history, and of art, today.