The Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Exhibit of American Negroes” (Part 5)
By: Jason Forrest
Tags: Data Visualization, History, African American, Dvhistory, BlackLivesMatter

This brings me to the biggest question that I’ve been considering since I began this project:

Why don’t more people know about Du Bois’s data visualizations?

The story of “The Exhibit of American Negroes” is both inspiring in its brilliance and originality, and tragic in its overlooked state — 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.

1. The Exhibit did not bring about social change.

As discussed at the close of my last article, Du Bois chanced upon the actual remains of Sam Hose 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’t enough:

“Two 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…”

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 “Du Bois Spiral” would be considered equivalent to Florence Nightingale’s “coxcomb” in historic significance.

2. Prejudice in the Sociological community obscured Du Bois’s importance

After his return from Paris, Du Bois became increasingly disenchanted with social science — especially in the face of violence and racism. Toward the end of his life he reflects on his change of heart, writing: “So far as the American world of science and letters was concerned, we never ‘belonged’; 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?”

Recognized social theorist Patricia Hill Collins argues that “different versions of a logic of segregation shaped all aspects of American society, including American sociology”. While Gurminder Bhambra, in his article outlines the stark reality: “the lack of attention given to alternative traditions of thought within the metropole has tended to elide the colonial past and drown out other voices…”

Poster for the Du Bois conference at Harvard Oct 25–27, 2018 link

In studying the Negro, Du Bois simply explored a subject that White America just didn’t care about — especially at the dawn of the twentieth century. Despite his academic pedigree and exhaustive rigor, Du Bois’s work was largely ignored by white academia which left his work underexposed. Certainly calls for re-exploring Du Bois’s sociological importance have been regularly called for over the years, but only in the past decade can his impact be felt more clearly.

Just last month Harvard University hosted a symposium to discuss Du Bois’s impact on sociology. The lectures and panels retraced his rise to prominence, discussed his methodical practices, and Du Bois’s importance in the world today. Indeed, as you can see to the left, the ‘Du Bois spiral’ is the leitmotif of the conference — an icon of hand-made progress and precision.

3. As racism became more vicious, Du Bois became more outspoken

Looking back at his time in Paris and as a social scientist, Du Bois recalls the very real needs of those trying to break through to a larger audience:

“Where 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.”

Three years later Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk. 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’s emotional appeal and intellectual brilliance was able to connect with a global audience bringing Du Bois the attention he sought and deserved.

4. A small chapter in a massive career

Du Bois begins the first series of charts with the now famous phrase: “The problem of the 20th-Century is the problem of the color line.” 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 the introduction of The Souls of Black Folk.

“The Georgia Negro” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

In crafting an exhibit exploring the excellence of the 19th-century Negro, Du Bois assembled the most definitive counter-argument to Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise of 1895. His passionate refutation of Washington in The Souls of Black Folk set Du Bois on a path that eventually establishes him as the leader of the Niagara Movement, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

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.

He died on August 27, 1963 — the day before the famous civil-rights March on Washington. Roy Wilkins, a civil-rights leader who had worked with Du Bois at the NAACP, announced Du Bois’s death at the march and asked for a moment of silence:

Du Bois portrait by Addison N. Scurlock. ca. 1905, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

“Regardless 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.”

The Civil Rights Act, was enacted the year after Du Bois’s 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.

Acknowledging the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois

As history is being re-written to be more inclusive, Du Bois’s 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.

A major advancement in the cause of exposing Du Bois’s work to a wider audience can be seen in the new book “W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America.” 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’s work predominantly from an African-American studies perspective and includes annotated prints of all the charts in the collection of the Library of Congress.

With every new article, the story of “The Exhibit of American Negroes” continues to spread Du Bois’s 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.

I’ll end with a quote from Du Bois’s Autobiography.

“On 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 “Negro” 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.”