W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits

Plate 2Du Bois and his team are masters of progressive disclosure, a technique that gradually reveals to the viewer the ideal amount of information in each data portrait.9 Moving from a global scale to a national one, this map of the United States contributes more detail to the previous plate’s mapping of the Black Atlantic world (see plate 1). A palette of bright primary colors, complementing subtle shades, and intricate textures conveys a range of black populations at a quick glance. An even more precise breakdown of population continues at the state and county levels in the subsequent charts (plates 3–6).

Plate 3The first bar chart in the series is an expert example of a visual economy of means. The horizontal red bars represent the relative Negro population of the United States broken down by state. The bars are stacked in descending order by population. The only anomaly in the progression appears at the end, where a combined bar at the base captures the remaining states. The most and least populous states are labeled with numerical figures to help viewers estimate the states in between (see plate 19).

Plate 4Stark black typography and slender rectangles washed in gray record a century of Negro population growth down the blank expanse of the page. This monochromatic bar graph is one of a handful of boards that are free of bright color. The monochromatic color is assigned to this more detailed level of data and matches the black rendering of Georgia in plate 2. The data is shown with simplicity, allowing the viewer a moment of quiet comprehension between more exuberant constructions of information and color in other charts.

Plate 5Many of the diagrams are sequenced strategically to build comparisons and new perspectives on the study’s datasets by considering relationships over time as well as space. This population index of Georgia by Counties, 1890 precedes the following map (plate 6), which shows the populations in 1870 and 1880. The vibrancy and opacity of the colors suggest the use of gouache, a subtype of watercolor that lies down with an opaque finish and bonds with its paper background. This material would later be critical to the flat and graphic visual language taught by the so-called Swiss schools in 1950s and 1960s Europe and spread throughout American graphic design education, especially via Armin Hoffman and his former students from the Basel School of Design.10

Plate 6The pair of state maps rendered here are an early example of a type of diagram taken for granted today: the heat map. Heat maps use color to allow a user to quickly identify highly active, dense, or concentrated parts of a space. First coined and trademarked in 1993 by Cormac Kinney, an enterprising software engineer, the heat map was a tool that used concentrations of color to represent wild swings in stock and mutual fund trading activity.11 Here, instead of marking the flow of funds, Du Bois maps the density of black Georgians across the state’s counties.

Plate 7Highly detailed and drawn with precision, this line chart tracks the rate of population growth for both whites and blacks in Georgia over the course of a century. The black lines of the growth rates and the red lines of the grid are too fine to be drawn with an ink brush. These delicate marks were likely drawn with a stylographic pen. Stylo pens featured a metal tip embedded with a fine wire to regulate a steady flow of ink and were a popular precursor to the nibbed fountain pen.12

Plate 8Two multicolored maps of the United States vibrate with a rainbow of states rendered in blocks of solid hues, tints, and shades. Only the state of Georgia stands in a rich black with stark type to emphasize its importance in the study. Every other state is overlaid with numerical indices that notate the movement of African Americans between states. Delicate arrows document patterns of migration away from former slave states and anticipate the magnetism of progressive urban cores to blacks in the later Great Migration.

Plate 9In this chart, Du Bois and his team choose to render data that could connect with an international audience. This straightforward yellow and black bar graph compares the ages of black Americans with their French equivalents of all races. Of particular note are the unique percentage signs that visually outweigh their numerical companions. These glyphs were likely improvised because standard alphabetic characters are not included in the engineered letter template that is the source of most of the typography in the Georgia study.13 Age ranges are linked to the bar charts with delicate and precise curving braces. The placement of Europeans and Georgia Negroes side by side using comparative data demonstrates the global status and robustness of the African American population.

Plate 10This tricolor chart stacks three pairs of bars representing Germans and black Americans of different marital statuses: red sections for single, yellow for married, and green for widowed or divorced. These are then divided according to designated age ranges. Du Bois chooses Germany, a neighboring presenter at the Paris Exposition, as a point of comparison in order to elevate the status of black Americans in the eyes of audiences abroad and at home. He does this by building a graphic relationship between African American populations and the mainly white populations of a major European power.

Plate 11Part bar chart, part line chart, and part spiral graph, this visualization defies categorization. The text paired with each segment reads more like a narrative than a typical key. Its tricolor palette and fragmentary construction make for a memorable, and experimental, presentation of data.

Plate 12Reading chronologically from top to bottom, this area chart mixes sharp and deckled edges. On the left, a torn black color field shows enslaved Georgians from 1790 to 1890. On the right, a geometrically sculpted red field charts the rise, decline, and rise again of the percentage of free blacks. A simply worded title tops the tensely arranged visual for maximum impact.

Plate 13The Georgia study also captures the relationship between class and skin tone within black culture. As a free, Northern-born, globally educated, and internationally traveled scholar working at a historically black college in the South, Du Bois had deep personal and empirical experience with what we now know as colorism.14 The chart shows three categories of race: “black” or “full-blooded Negroes,” “brown” or “persons with some white blood or descendants of light colored Africans,” and “yellow” or “persons with more white than Negro blood.” Rendered in corresponding black, brown, and yellow gouache, the heaviness of this subject is given visceral form. The red “40%” recalls the word blood and its usage as a descriptor of race.

Plate 14This black-and-white bar diagram takes on a very atypical woven structure. Used here for illiteracy figures and their corresponding years, this lattice-like arrangement is repeated in another bar chart about Negro property (plate 23). This repeated style reflects both a necessity to be efficient and the continued exploration that comes with experimentation in an unfamiliar medium. The interleaved bars also visually relate to other curving and turning bar and spiral charts. Both are examples of a tension between Du Bois’s interest in condensing data into the most economic form and his leadership of a team of sociologists acting as designers-in-training. Another atypical choice by the Atlanta University team is the representation of extrapolated data not yet measured in their study. Here they postulate an illiteracy rate of 50 percent in 1900 marked with a pair of question marks.

Plate 15A small array of bars shows the increasing enrollment of black students in Georgia public schools. Starting with the sliver of seven students in 1860—three years before the Emancipation Proclamation—the enrollment rates increase exponentially before slowing to a more gradual increase in 1897. The sober presentation of this information enhances its impact through minimal visual means.

Plate 16No chart in the entire set is as graphically simple as this one: four monochromatic circles float in a solitary column, each slightly larger than the previous one. There is no key, just two sets of numbers. The number below the circle represents the year that the data was measured, and the number inside the circle represents the number of black teachers in Georgia public schools that year. This is one of three rare moments in the infographics when both the shape and the typography appear in color. The overall result reinforces the designers’ interest in representing an exhaustive amount of information in an efficient and elegant way.

Plate 17A double-curved outlier at the end of a series of straight bars is a more creative way to show the dramatic ratio of Negro students studying industrial arts. The snaking data is a visual focal point on a chart that shows the dominance of industrial education for black Americans in 1900.

Plate 18Eschewing their penchant for geometric shapes, the Atlanta University team created a pictographic hybrid to represent land held by black Georgians. Stylized drawings of burlap sacks are lined up and down the board. Labeled with a year and dollar amount, it is easy to imagine each filled with stacks of United States currency. This iconographic approach is a precedent to the visual language that would surface two decades later when Otto Neurath, Marie Neurath, and Gerd Arntz created the Isotype picture language.15 Like the Isotype team, Du Bois worked collectively with others and believed that a symbolic visual language could have universal social impact.

Plate 19Du Bois and his team generated the greatest number of charts using the bar format. The team was likely familiar with William Playfair, the originator of this diagram type and a statistician who understood the power of the visual. Its rectilinear form and linear structure are easy for the viewer to cognitively process. Its simple style also makes it a natural choice for a team working under time constraints. The arrangement of bars approximates the shape of the state of Georgia itself and, in this way, links to the next image in the series, a map titled Land Owned by Negroes in Georgia, U.S.A., 1870–1900.

Plate 20This map is distinct from the other geographic maps because of its spare form and succinct communication methods. There is no key and almost no typography beyond the title and a short sentence explaining that the numbers represent acres of land held by Georgia blacks. Deep in the map is a small fragment of constructed type paired with a circular symbol representing the city of Macon and a hand-drawn equivalent for the capital, Atlanta.

Plate 21What appears to be another straightforward line chart is one of the most overtly political charts in the Georgia study. An undulating black line shows extrapolated property values in outline and actual property values in solid black crossing a red grid of squares. Tucked into the grid is a series of disquieting socioeconomic and political trends: the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and political unrest in the 1870s; new industrialism in the 1880s; followed by lynching, financial panic, disenfranchisement, and proscriptive laws in the 1890s. This diagram powerfully links the economic progress of black Georgians to larger regimes of violence against African Americans, pointing to the widespread disenfranchisement and dispossession of black people in the post-Reconstruction era.

Plate 22Like a bull’s-eye used in target practice, this nested circle chart draws the viewer to dead center. The value of all black-owned land in Georgia in 1875—$5,393,885—appears to float in crisp, white engineered numbers. Rogers, Du Bois, and their team strategically use color and shape to create an optical gravity. As the rings move inward, the value of the colors grows continually darker, with the exception of the one red rim holding the structure together. The eye is drawn in with sharp triangular arrows to the total value of land owned in five-year periods from 1880 to 1889. The arrows are unusually rendered with a pattern of tiny undulations that resemble waves. What looks at first glance like the accidentally shaky hand of a novice production designer is actually an intentional set of wave textures. The circles, triangles, and square of the page anticipate Kandinsky’s famous Bauhaus color and shape tests administered to his students decades later.16 The unusual slicing in this pie chart also evokes Florence Nightingale’s polar diagrams from four decades prior.17

Plate 23An overlapping matrix of baby blue and yellow bars represents the number of black property owners and land values in two Georgia cities: Atlanta and Savannah. In this carefully woven bar chart, the Du Bois team uses two different data sets to visually reinforce both. As a statistician, Du Bois would be interested in ways to display correlation and even causality in data gathered in different parts of the state in different years. Much like the spiral diagrams before it, this lattice bar chart might be considered its own chart typology: the woven bar chart.

Plate 24Because of the importance of agricultural labor for African Americans in this period, the value of their farm tools was critical. This horizontal stack of brown-colored bands is only identified by the year of value recorded. The choice to leave out the dollar amounts of these figures could be a combination of the expediency of the project and their relatively small value in comparison with other relevant figures such as the cost of property and land.

Plate 25Six curving bars of color initiate from a stacked block of text listing the value of household furniture owned by black Georgians over a twenty-five-year period. Each spiral is a different pastel or primary color that wraps around a core origin point. The rings show a growing trend over time, each longer than the previous one. The unusual and complex configuration of the spiral diagram here builds on graphic constructions such as Playfair’s pie chart and Nightingale’s rose diagram. The end result is simultaneously easy to read and hypnotic.

Plate 26This chart documents black male workers in the year 1890. It is uncannily similar to the chart Occupations in Which 10,000 or More American Negroes are Engaged (plate 45) in the second study and appears to be a more preparatory diagram focusing on black youth and men over ten years old. Notably, the chart leaves out labor roles predominated by black women, including seamstresses, laundresses, and domestic servants. The top group of agricultural laborers uses one of Du Bois’s distinctive curved bars to keep the largest number of workers in proportion without leaving the page. This detail, along with the bold “1890” placed in the middle of the page, suggests that this is an earlier draft of the more refined plate that follows (plate 27).

Plate 27This circle chart is one of the most visually economical designs in the Georgia study.18 Radially sliced wedges are filled with a primary color palette that is accented with a light brown and beige that may refer to skin tones. Two sets of larger wedges representing Negroes and whites hover cantilevered at the chart’s center point. Du Bois builds dynamic tension by cascading color around the chart in opposing clockwise and counterclockwise directions, making the diagram look as if the “Negro” wedges might collapse over the “White” wedges at any moment. In a feat of spatial economy and visual wit, the key made of intact circles is tucked within the negative space, both echoing and stabilizing the overall composition.

Plate 28This table listing occupations and related wages is drawn in graphite. The casual aesthetic coupled with handwritten text suggests that this visualization was created earlier in support of the pie chart that comes before it (plate 27).

Plate 29This additional table of black occupations and income was drawn on the reverse of the previous table. This table could hold as much information as other chart types, but much of the grid is composed of empty units drawn in faint pencil. The in-process nature of these and similar boards raises questions about their creation: Were there other preparatory materials that Du Bois, Rogers, and the team used to build the diagrams? Were there multiple teams at work that executed the differing lettering styles, color palettes, and visual structures? What did Du Bois and his team plan for the boards after their exhibition in Paris and across the United States?

Plate 30Reversing the contemporary use of black in economics to represent profit and red to represent loss, this bar chart paints a strong picture of financial hardship for black farm tenants at the turn of the century.

Plate 31Representing 150 black Atlanta families, the layout of this data visualization is strikingly contemporary in its complexity and variety of media. It features a mixed media palette of inked typography, charts colored in gouache, photographic prints, photomechanical reproductions of type, and even gold-leaf painting in a seal in the upper-left corner. Organizing the family budgets into bar charts by class, pastel-colored subcategories are shown for rent, food, clothing, direct taxes, and other expenses. These are linked by fine black lines to a complex grid containing representative images, detailed breakdowns of diets, and poetic descriptions of funds for savings. The use of connecting lines, arrows, and delicate braces creates a spatial feast for the eye. Despite the overwhelming amount of information on display, it is digestible. There is even a note at the bottom of the diagram suggesting that the viewer “raise this frame” to see more information. This is a direct instructional reference to the double-sided, movable standards on “wing frames” that fairgoers could lift and turn, and to the two data sets that follow here (plates 32 and 33).19

Plate 32In this table, budgets of eight black families are arranged in a tight grid containing a complex set of typographic and hand-lettered styles. This is the same data used in the previous plate but rendered in greater numerical detail. It would be viewable after lifting the winged frame of Income and Expenditure of 150 Negro Families in Atlanta, GA, U.S.A. Headings are inked in finely engineered capitals listing the occupations of each head of the household and each total family annual income. Notably, the fireman’s and engineer’s households make the least, and the painter’s household earns the most. A list of questions and attributes of the family, from their working hours to their medical bills, is shown in serifed type. Answers to these entries are handwritten with a variety of approaches to penmanship. These hands are likely those of Du Bois’s Atlanta researchers, evoking a range of diverse voices.

Plate 33This design appears on the reverse side of the previous Family Budgets table. The same eight-part grid, body copy style, and handwritten entries are visible behind a layer of brown paper accidentally stuck on the board. The title and headlines are sketched in pencil. This work shows the complexity of translating numeric data into a pencil-drawn layout that would later be lettered or typeset, inked, and finally colored with gouache.

Plate 34In this map, the first of a trio of detailed maps of Georgia counties, Du Bois and his team show both visual dexterity and the detailed rigor of the research presented, which includes data of residential areas within the state. The intricate geometry created by the town and city grid is populated with color-coded dots that map the class distribution in black communities in select parts of the state.20 Four colors represent classes determined by Du Bois: red for “well-to-do,” green for “better class of laborers,” navy blue for “poor,” and black for “lowest class.” A final yellow dot is used for the general positioning of white residents. The script-based typography is a departure from the more engineered template lettering used in the keys for most of the other maps, yet another sign of a larger group of makers at work.

Plate 35The second map, of McIntosh County, zooms out to a wider perspective showing roads, railways, and rivers in the rural areas surrounding the town of Darien, Georgia. A key of dots continues the system of black class distribution across the county. The pair of keys, one for the population distribution and the other for the geographic aspects, uses slight size variations in engineered lettering.

Plate 36The final map in the trio is an expanded detail of the previous map focusing on the town of Darien, Georgia. An idyllic costal town, Darien might have been chosen by Du Bois because of its ties to the shipping and lumber industries that employed many black workers, or because of a notorious looting by Union soldiers during the Civil War.21 The town is represented by a diagonal grid of streets bordered in the west and south by a curving river. Although the key uses the same colors as the previous two county maps, small variations in language and typeface suggest a collective of designers working at great speed.

Part II

A Series of Statistical Charts Illustrating the Condition of the Descendants of Former African Slaves Now Resident in the United States of America

37A Series of Statistical Charts Illustrating the Condition of the Descendants of Former African Slaves Now Resident in the United States of America

38Distribution of Negroes in the United States

39Increase of the Negro Population in the United States of America

40Comparative Rate of Increase of the White and Negro Elements of the Population of the United States

41Negro Population of the United States Compared with the Total Population of Other Countries

42Proportion of Negroes in the Total Population of the United States

43Occupations in Which American Negroes are Engaged

44Proportion of Whites and Negroes in the Different Classes of Occupation in the United States

45Occupations in Which 10,000 or More American Negroes Are Engaged

46Number of Negro Teachers in the Public Schools of the United States

47Illiteracy of the American Negroes Compared with That of Other Nations

48Enrollment in the Negro Common Schools of the Former Slave States of the United States

49Proportion of Total Negro Children of School Age Who Are Enrolled in the Public Schools

50The Rise of the Negroes from Slavery to Freedom in One Generation

51Proportion of Freemen and Slaves among American Negroes

52City and Rural Population among American Negroes in the Former Slave States

53Conjugal Condition of American Negroes According to Age Periods

54The Amalgamation of the White and Black Elements of the Population in the United States

55Propietes contribuables des Nègres dans trois états des États Unis [Assessed Value of Property Owned by Negroes in Three States of the United States]

56Negro Landholders in Various States of the United States

57Negro Business Men in the United States

58Pauperism among American Negroes

59Mortality of American Negroes

60Crime among American Negroes

61American Negro Newspapers and Periodicals

62Religion of American Negroes

63Statistics of Negro Church Organizations

All boards are approximately 22 × 28 inches, rendered in ink and watercolor.22

Plate 37Designed as a proclamation in type and image form, the first panel in the second series is among the most dense. It is also the most self-referential, describing the subject of black Americans in Georgia while also pointing to Atlanta University as a collective author of the data visualizations to follow. The palette of gouache in bright colors continues from the Georgia study. All the charts that follow feature a strategic mix of typographical families and styles. The principal type appears to be a sans serif or grotesque typeface, which predates the twentieth century. Closer inspection reveals that the predominant letter style used in the charts has no curves—only straight lines—and is more akin to lettering generated by templates designed for architectural or engineering plans. Based on the authors’ training in sociology rather than graphic design, it would make sense for the Atlanta University students to have used some templates and preexisting tools. The residue of technical lettering, most likely from an American architectural letter template, is especially visible in the lighter weights of the hand-rendered type utilized for the French translations, evidenced by the non-standard weight of heavier diacritical marks (accents).

Plate 38This map of the United States represents the overall distribution of black Americans in 1890. A key of circles filled with colors favored by Du Bois and his team appear above the nation, with yellow, blue, red, brown, and black corresponding to increasing density. It is common across all of the charts that darker and more saturated colors are usually used for statistics with greater value, density, or importance. The technique here connects to similar heat map strategies used elsewhere.

Plate 39Population is a common subject of many of the charts generated by the Atlanta University team. The data set depicted here is unique in that it covers a span of 140 years. This chart also deploys both old-style typography and engineered templated lettering.

Plate 40Charting data back to the late eighteenth century, this line chart compares populations of blacks and whites by total number instead of by the rate of growth, as depicted in the previous chart. Key socioeconomic events are mapped on the grid, this time with a mix of domestic and international forces. The abolition of the slave trade, immigration from Europe, and Emancipation are noted as key influences on both populations. The inclusion of “the suppression of slave trade” on the chart also resonates with the title and topic of Du Bois’s 1896 dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America.23 Visually, this chart’s lettering style and craft in regards to rendering varies considerably from the previous two line charts (plates 7 and 21). Key differences include the use of small capitals in the engineered lettering for the word millions, and a uniquely ornate hand-lettered style for the key.

Plate 41In this diagram, a solid black United States with a red outline is centered around strategically chosen European nations, all drawn from the perspective of the Mercator projection.24 The European nations are scaled to a relative size for quick visual comparison of total population. The typography of the headline and the country labels is more condensed than the typography in the Georgia study. This typographic variance between the two series supports the idea that different teams of makers were dispatched by Du Bois to ensure production in time for the Paris Exposition.

Plate 42This companion to the previous map also uses geographic scale as a key comparative tool. The black population of the United States is shown to be growing over the nineteenth century with a scale shift in the country outlines. The type size of the year and proportional labels changes according to the size of the country. The color palette of red, green, and black is a likely allusion to the Pan-African flag. Red symbolizes blood shed for freedom, black the hue of the skin of people of African descent, and green the lush landscape of the motherland.25 Du Bois’s connections with Pan-African movements in the United States and abroad are a natural source for the tricolor configuration that recurs in a number of the plates.26

Plate 43Three towering bars stack information on the occupations of black Georgians according to the worker’s gender. This diagram translates both the heading and the key into the French text that cascades vertically down each bar. The varying sizes, alignments, and positions of the typography continue to imply the work of multiple hands.

Plate 44Outlined in a deep red, five graphic black slices of ink representing black workers in a range of professions confront the viewer in a pinwheel design. At first glance the circle chart structure is obscured by the intense contrast between these dark shapes and their white-hatched counterparts, which represent white workers. Further inspection shows meticulous detail in a red circle inscribed with categories contained by tabs that are met with tiny arrows drawn in graphite. The English and French headings and a credit to Atlanta University are typeset in an alternative serif that is used in the headings for a third of the plates. The origin of this old-style typeface can be traced to late fifteenth-century European printing, especially in Italy.27 The regularity of the type size, consistency of individual forms, and pencil-drawn hang line for type placement suggest these headings were generated by letterpress or offset printing.28 The details in this chart indicate that the diagrams were likely first composed in pencil and then finished with ink and gouache.

Plate 45Built around a list of professions, this bar chart depicts in strong contrast the imbalance in roles for black workers. A long, bright red bar representing agricultural labor dominates a descending stream of farmers, servants, and other laborers. A final group with very detailed job titles includes barbers, sawmill operators, tobacco factory workers, and seamstresses. This small, widely varied group presents a “long tail” of more skilled occupations.29

Plate 46Here, Du Bois is strategic in his use of statistical detail. Highlighting the noble profession of the schoolteacher, this bright yellow bar chart covers only nine years. However, by foregrounding this small data set, Du Bois emphasizes that education, along with population growth and property ownership, is critical to black self-determination.

Plate 47A bright red bar set in a horizontal grouping of green bars compares the illiteracy of black Americans to other nations participating in the Paris Exposition. In order to correct misconceptions about the education of black Americans, Du Bois compares the United States to other countries with rates of greater and lesser illiteracy. The key is written in French only, an indicator that Du Bois and his team sought to target the fair’s European audience.

Plate 48Based in part on his own life experience, Du Bois knew that education was a critical indicator of social and economic equality. This brown chart clearly references skin tone and boldly demonstrates educational progress for states that would later regress with the impact of Jim Crow laws.30

Plate 49In this bar chart, the shapes, figures, and typography grow bolder and more graphic. Black and red rectangles are combined with bold numbers that show a steady increase in the enrollment of school-age children of color after Emancipation.

Plate 50Both a proclamation and a diagram, this display of the rapid transformation from slave laborers to a mix of tenants and landholders is mapped across a pair of saturated bars. Again using the Pan-African colors of red, black, and green, the bars read like hanging protest banners. Fine dotted lines of ink appear like an explosion on the page, showing the increase in free laborers from 11 percent in 1860 to 81 percent in 1890. The narrative of black self-determination is further emphasized here with a note that black home and land ownership “was accomplished entirely without state aid and in the face of proscriptive laws.”

Plate 51This area chart uses similar information as Slaves and Free Negroes (plate 12) but renders it on a national level and in a completely different way. The chronology reads left to right, and green and black are used instead of red. The Atlanta group may have been motivated to make different but related visual interpretations by a desire to explore how varied forms might be read by the audience in new ways.