Du Bois Charts: Twittered, Tumbld, Stumbled, fffound

African American women on the steps of a building at Atlanta University, 1899 or 1900. Photo by Thomas E. Askew (Du Bois archive, Library of Congress)

Two weeks ago ( I know, that's a bout a decade in internet time), I posted the awesome charts that W. E. B. Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University produced for the Paris Exposition in 1900. I still haven’t quite processed the overwhelming response to this work. Not only has the massive amount of tweeting and reblogging, sent my page views through the roof, but the charts have gotten attention way beyond the infographic and design communities. They have been posted on political blogs and have sparked some lively debate.

So if you were one of the scores of viewers smitten by these infographics, know that you were/are not alone. And much thanks to all who passed them along. The networked enthusiasm created so much visibility for the Du Bois chart, that John Pavlus of Fast Company featured them on FastCo Design as Infographic of the Day. They were also posted by David McCandless as Vintage Infoporn on Information is Beautiful.


Here are some highlights from the bloggesphere:

Adam Serwer of the Prospect observes that “…you can get a hint from this of the days when teachers at black schools were among the best in the country -- Jim Crow was funneling the most educated black minds into a very limited set of professions.

Yglesias of Think Progress picks up from Serwer, “As you can see here, a staggeringly high proportion of Atlanta University graduates were becoming teachers… This and the parallel set of facts for women is, I think, an unduly neglected trend in recent American life. A related point is that you tended to see relatively high-performing K-12 education systems in Communist countries. Jim Crow, patriarchy, and the economic policies of Fidel Castro are all ways to artificially increase the appeal of a teaching career relative to other options … When teaching was the only thing many classes of smart ambitious people could do, it was easier to run a high-performing school. 33 comments followed that post.

Derek Attig at HASTAC considers the display of these charts in Paris, a political act. For him, they were more proof of “…how important circulating information transnationally could be for civil rights struggles. As Ida B. Wells had demonstrated just seven years earlier, with her anti-lynching speaking tours of Britain [PDF], getting information out of the South, and indeed, out of the United States, could be a vital part of such campaigns. (Abolitionists in the antebellum period frequently made similar transatlantic tours, as well.) …

Given the language-barrier problems that could confront Americans at a global exposition in Paris, the highly graphic (and lightly textual) nature of so many of the posters indicates some careful thought about the politics of communicating information and capturing attention, which are so central to freedom struggles of all kinds.”

Jacob Alonso, of Seeing Complexity, also sees visualizing information as a political act: “Du Bois’ students made a radical decision when they visualized the economic plight of a group explicitly excluded from statistical analysis and thus hidden from international attention. …the simple act of disseminating information can, in itself, be a radical and potentially transformative act.”


And then there was the ultimate indication of how important these charts are—an anonymous reader commented that the graphics were obvious fakes!

Black History Charts, 1900

The stunning charts you see here were hand drawn and colored at the turn of the 19th century, by Sociology students at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University). Their professor at the time, African American activist W.E.B. Du Bois, was organizing the upcoming “American Negro” exhibit for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Over 60 charts and maps, along with specially commissioned photographs were prepared for The Georgia Negro Exhibit, which was part of the larger display. Only three of these infographics are available in color from the Library of Congress. Click on them to view them larger. There are black and white reproductions of the entire group (see selection below), at the extensive online archive created by Professor Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., of the University of Miami. There, you will find an enormous amount of information and visual material pertaining to this important historic exhibit.




The following excerpts from Professor Provenzo’s site offer more detail about the information graphics.

Du Boise described the project in his autobiography:
In 1900 came a significant occurrence which not until lately have I set in its proper place in my life. I had been for over nine years studying the American Negro problem. The result had been significant because of its unusual nature and not for its positive accomplishment. I wanted to set down its aim and method in some outstanding way which would bring my work to the notice of the thinking world. The great World's Fair at Paris was being planned and I thought I might put my findings into plans, charts and figures, so one might see what we were trying to accomplish. I got a couple of my best students and put a series of facts into charts: the size and growth of the Negro American group; its division by age and sex; its distribution, education and occupations; its books and periodicals. We made a most interesting set of drawings, limned on pasteboard cards about a yard square and mounted on a number of moveable standards.

From an official report provided to the Exposition:
Finally should be mentioned the results of the special studies carried out by Professor Du Bois. These consisted of a series of charts showing the condition of the colored race in the State of Georgia. This State was selected as being the one with the largest negro population. These charts showed first the general distribution of the negro race in all parts of the world, then the distribution in the United States by States, and finally the conditions in Georgia in great detail. These latter charts indicated the growth of the negro population in the State by decades; its relative increase in comparison with that of the white race; migration to and from the State; the distribution of the negroes according to age, sex, and conjugal condition; the occupations of the negroes; the number who could read and write; the value of the property owned by negroes; the number of acres owned by them or being cultivated by them as owners or tenants; the value of farm implements, horses, and stock owned, etc.

The variety and inventiveness of charting devices used, is quite impressive, especially for undergraduate Sociology students in 1900. Unfortunately, the quality of reproduction is not very good. I’ve uploaded the files here, as I found them. Some will enlarge when clicked, and some won’t. Once again, to view the entire series go here.