W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits

Summary: Short look at both the history of WEB Dubois 1900 World Fair project and how it predated much of the graphical data representation that became common later in the 20th century.

This is not a long book. There are really only a handful of essays. Those essays give context to the 1900 Paris World Exposition, WEB DuBois and his experience up until this point, and the data that was being presented. A final section discusses how innovative the presentation of the data was and how it predated later similar graphical data presentations.

I have known about this book since it came out but just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I have an undergrad degree in sociology and part of an early job was using GIS demographics to help churches and church plants with planning. So I have a fair amount of background to know how important this event was in regard to data presentation.

But this matters in part because of what WEB DuBois and the others who participated were trying to do. 1900 was 35 years after the end of slavery. Contextually, 35 yeas ago was 1990, and the first Iraq War hadn’t happened yet. George HW Bush was president and the http protocol was being developed but the first real web browser would not be released widely until 1994. In other words, slavery was recent. It wasn’t just that slavery was recent but that there was widespread perception that Black Americans (and all from African decent) were “less than” those from European decent. The presentation, and WEB DuBois himself, were proof of the falsity of that belief.

This is a fairly niche book, but in a time where there less celebration of minority accomplishments, this is just another datapoint that needs to be widely known. If you want to see some of the graphics from the presentation, the Museum of African American History and Culture has a good webpage about it.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/visualizing-black-a...