W. E. B. Du Bois’ staggering Data Visualizations are as powerful today as they were in 1900 (Part 1)
By: Jason Forrest
Tags: Design, Dvhistory, African American History, Data Science, Data Visualization

The Exhibit of American Negroes

Exposition des Nègres d’Amerique, Exposition Universelle, Paris 1900. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

“The Exhibit of American Negroes” at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris was created by activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, in collaboration with educator and social leader Booker T Washington, prominent black lawyer Thomas J. Calloway and students from historically black college Atlanta University.

In his remarkable 1968 Autobiography, Du Bois at the age of 90 recounts a lecture from a lifetime earlier in 1897. “The American Negro deserves study for the great end of advancing the cause of science in general. No such opportunity to watch and measure the history and development of a great race of men ever presented itself to the scholars of a modern nation. If they miss this opportunity — if they do the work in a slipshod, unsystematic manner — if they dally with the truth to humor the whims of the day, they do far more than hurt the good name of scientific truth the world over, they voluntarily decrease human knowledge…”

Du Bois describes the exhibition as “Thirty-two charts, 500 photographs, and numerous maps and plans form the basis of this exhibit. The charts are in two sets, one illustrating conditions in the entire United States and the other conditions in the typical State of Georgia”. The data visualizations in “The Exhibit of American Negroes” is therefore split into 2 sections: “A Series of Statistical Charts Illustrating the Condition of the Descendants of Former African Slaves Now in Residence in the United States of America” which focuses on the national view of the data, and a companion work done the same year called “The Georgia Negro”.

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

In the article “The American Negro at Paris” he writes: “It was a good idea to supplement these very general figures with a minute social study in a typical Southern State. It would hardly be suggested, in the light of recent history, that conditions in the State of Georgia are such as to give a rose-colored picture of the Negro; and yet Georgia, having the largest Negro population, is an excellent field of study.”

Du Bois continues in his Autobiography: “I wanted to set down its aim and method in some outstanding way which would bring my work to 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.”

The resulting exhibition was more than just a scientific report. It was a targeted attempt to sway the world’s elite to acknowledge the American Negro in an effort to influence cultural change in the USA from abroad. The charts in the exhibition are arranged to tell a story with data that presents a complex picture of a people, their struggle and perseverance despite more than a century of abject slavery.

This is where I’d like to begin.

“Proportion of Freemen and Slaves among American Negroes”, 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

The above chart is a masterwork of data journalism. It’s hard to look at the chart above and not feel like you’ve been kicked in the gut. The mountainous black area punctuated by the word(s) SLAVES sits immovable under a green ribbon that opens to the right of the chart.

The story it tells is simple: for 76 years no less than 86% of all Negros in the USA were slaves. But like most charts, the subtleties might be easy to miss. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on Jan 1, 1863, yet it takes an additional 7 years (and a Civil War) for the remaining 6,675,000 slaves to find their freedom.

“Slaves and Free Negroes” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

The above is a breakout chart focusing just on ‘The Georgia Negro”. If one can visualize this chart rotated 90 degrees, this serves as a “double click” on the preceding chart above. It shows the percent of free Negroes only in the state of Georgia, which at it’s greatest point was only 1.7% over a 73 year period.

Let’s look to the 1860 census to get some sense of scale. Of the total population of 1,057,286 people in Georgia, 462,198 were slaves — 44% of the entire population.

Remember, the audience for the exposition were the elite leaders in science and business from Europe and the western world. Slavery in America was still very fresh in everyone’s mind. Du Bois knew a logical argument presented in scientific terms would provoke conversation and the brutally graphic truth of each of these charts would be impossible to deny.

Du Bois writes “…[the] exhibit which, more than most others in the building, is sociological in the larger sense of the term — that is, is an attempt to give, in as systematic and compact a form as possible, the history and present condition of a large group of human beings.” Notice the emphasis on the term ‘human beings’ consistently linked with ‘American Negro’. By acknowledging slavery as a foundation for the American Negro, he also establishes a baseline by which to show how far this large group of human beings has progressed.

In the charts below Du Bois focuses on population growth:

“Increase of the Negro population in the United States of America” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

By reducing each chart to its essence, Du Bois adds successive arguments to the larger message. The above chart shows a fairly steady 68% — 88% population growth over a 140 year period.

As early as 1807 an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson which sought to block the flow of slaves into the southern states. Then in 1820 slave-trading became a capital offense, and as promising as that sounds, only 74 cases were raised, few captains were convicted and only one miserable bastard was actually executed.

The chart above is proof that the measures taken to end slaving in the mid-1800s were a failure. Du Bois understood that his cultured audience knew the events and politics more than the raw data he provides — the data itself was an incrimination.

“Comparative rate of increase of the White and Negro elements of the population of the United States” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

The above chart shows the explosion of the overall US population from 1830 to 1890 with only a marginal rate of increase for the Negro population in general. Despite a huge boom in European immigration, few Negros immigrated to the US during this time. Natural population growth and a decrease in the mortality rate after the 1865 passing of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery were the likely causes of the increase.

That said, the overall size of the Negro population was still massive, to which Du Bois brilliantly compares against the entire populations of several European countries below.

“Negro population of the United States compared with the total population of other countries” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Again in “The American Negro at Paris” Du Bois says “At a glance one can see the successive steps by which the 220,000 Negroes of 1750 had increased to 7,500,000 in 1890; their distribution throughout the different States; a comparison of the size of the Negro population with European countries bringing out the striking fact that there are nearly half as many Negroes in the United States as Spaniards in Spain.”

“Proportion of Negroes in the Total Population of the United States” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

By visualizing Negro population growth as a small nation growing inside of the American silhouette, Du Bois elegantly crafts a complex argument. As the silhouette of the country grows, the ‘Negro’ population also grows, not at a faster rate but as a distinctly different entity.

This is not a line or bar chart to compare numbers. Du Bois’ visualizes the data in terms of distinct nations. When viewed alongside the preceding image showing a fully ‘Negro’ populated United States in comparison to European countries, Du Bois clearly implies the existence of a separate Negro nation/state.

“The Amalgamation of the White and Black elements of the population in the United States” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

One of my favorites, the above chart not only shows the fluidity of race as applied to the term ‘Negro’ but also slyly asserts a sizable portion of the White population had ‘Negro blood’.

By crafting a dispassionate argument focused on the numbers Du Bois makes an argument an African-American would be prevented from articulating verbally. The massive black area a slight of hand to distract from the not-so-subtle accusation on the right side of the chart.

“Race Amalgamation in Georgia ” 1900, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Another “double click” into the smaller Georgia demographic, a single stacked-bar chart puts the emphasis on the values of black and brown to create an 84% block. The blood-red “40%”, a corporeal smear only semi-visible in the center block.

But like the preceding chart, the grouping of the dark values points away from the uncomfortable data showing that 56% majority of Negros were of some mixed blood.