Data Portraits of African Americans

W.E.B. Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University created a stunning series of hand-drawn data visualizations for the 1900 Paris Exposition, depicting the social and economic conditions of Black Americans after emancipation. The 63 infographics used bold colors, innovative chart forms, and striking geometric compositions.

What makes these remarkable is their dual purpose: they were rigorous social science AND bold graphic design, decades ahead of their time. The spiral charts, nested proportional areas, and vivid color palettes anticipated modern data art by a century.

Recently rediscovered and celebrated in the book W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits (2018), these works demonstrate that data visualization has always been political — who gets counted, how they are represented, and what story the data is made to tell.