W. E. B. Du Bois's data portraits: visualizing Black America: the color line at the turn of the twentieth centur

At the 1900 Paris Exposition, the famed sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois presented a series of groundbreaking data visualizations advocating for African American progress. These graphs, charts, and maps provided powerful glimpses into the lives of black Americans to convey both a literal and figurative representation of what Du Bois famously referred to as “the color line.” From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these infographics - beautiful in design and impactful in content - made visible a wide spectrum of black experience. W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits collects the complete set of infographics for the first time in full color, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary audience while exploring their context in social and design history. As Du Bois’s prophetic work continues to grow in potency and relevance, these images illustrate, in the words of the introduction, how “data might be reimagined as a form of accountability and even protest in the age of Black Lives Matter.”–Back cover