The Illuminating Illustrations of Civil Rights Activist W.E.B. Du Bois

In April 1900, a series of graphic representations of sociological data on African Americans debuted at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The work of W.E.B. Du Bois and a team of researchers affiliated with Atlanta University, it presented a picture of the lives of black Americans 35 years after the U.S. abolished slavery. Until then, world’s fairs had represented nonwhite races through the dehumanizing lens of social Darwinism. Radically, Du Bois’s illustrations showed the gains African Americans had made despite persistent racism and white supremacy, as Whitney Battle- Baptiste and Britt Rusert argue in their editors’ introduction to W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America, out this month. Collected for the first time in book form on the occasion of Du Bois’s 150th birthday, and accompanied by academic essays, the infographics underscore the groundbreaking contributions of this eminent intellect and activist.

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