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Between Data and Truth

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

There is a now-famous photograph, yellowed by age, which was taken in Paris in the spring of 1900. No people appear in the photo. Instead what appears is a low bookcase, its shelves lined end-to-end with books large and small. The top of the bookcase, at counter height, is stacked with more books, pamphlets, and other artifacts, intended to be perused. And above the bookcase are charts—dozens and dozens of them—along with photographs and additional artifacts, each installed in a picture frame or swing-out vitrine, and mounted in rows reaching up to the sky.

Exhibit of the American negroes at the Paris exposition.
A photograph of the exhibit desiged by W.E.B. Du Bois for the 1900 Exposition Universelle Retrieved from the Library of Congress,

The photograph documents the exhibit that W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), the field-defining sociologist, author, and activist, designed for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. The “American Negro Exhibit,” as it was called, was the result of over a year of campaigning, reaching up to the President of the United States, to include the contributions of Black Americans as among the other celebratory displays of national might and ingenuity that were typical of World's Fairs at the time. Du Bois and his co-curator, Daniel A.P. Murray, then the Assistant Librarian of Congress, were given the southeast corner of the U.S. exhibition space in the Palace of Social Economy and Congresses—what visitors would have seen immediately to their right upon entering the hall—and went to work. While Murray tasked himself with assembling a set of books by Black writers to put on display, Du Bois saw his purview in more conceptual terms: to present “the history and present condition of a large group of human beings”—namely, the nation's Black citizens—"in as systematic and compact a form as possible.”

A map of the seventh ward of Philadelphia. The map is about four times as wide as it is long, and its yellowed paper is worn, creased, and torn at the edges. Subdivided by street names, the Black population in this region is categorized by a color which corresponds to social condition. Red, green, blue, and black rectangles are drawn within building outlines that run along the streets of the ward. Red describes the middle and upper classes, green represents the “fair to comfortable” working class, blue describes the “poor” lower class, black represents the “vicious and criminal classes,” and the remaining white spaces, which occupy much of the map, indicate white residences, stories, public buildings, “etc..”
“Distribution of African American inhabitants of the 7th Ward,” the central image of The Philadelphia Negro, which was published in 1898. In order to conduct the research for The Philadelpha Negro, Du Bois (and his wife Nina) moved to the neighborhood, where Du Bois administered social surveys and collected the other data that would culminate in the report. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This “systematic and compact form” was, of course, data visualization—a technique that Du Bois had first encountered a decade earlier during his graduate study in Germany, and that he'd perfected more recently in Philadelphia, where he lived with his wife Nina, in 1896, as he collected the social surveys and other data that would culminate in The Philadelphia Negro. Du Bois had since moved to Atlanta to take up a position as a professor of sociology at Atlanta University, and because time—and money—was already running short, he enlisted the expertise of William Andrew Rogers, who had graduated from Atlanta University the year before, as well as the four students then enrolled in his year-long sociology course. Together, Du Bois and his team created the create 63 poster-sized charts—each a dazzling display of trenchant data analysis and inventive graphic design—that would travel to Paris in several months' time.

A map of two globes showing the distribution of Black people across the world, indicated by three shades: beige, black, and brown. Several lines connect the African continent to prominent countries in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean along the Atlantic Slave Trade, with a lone white star depicted in the state of Georgia. The caption on the page reads: “This case is devoted to a series of charts, maps, and other devices designed to illustrate the development of the American Negro in a single typical state of the United States. ‘The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.’”
The Georgia Negro: A Social Study Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-33863.

Like Thomas Clarkson, William Playfair, and most data visualization practitioners ever since, Du Bois appreciated the ability of visualization to convey significant trends and patterns—in his words—“at a glance.” In the case of the charts that he and his students designed for the Paris Exposition, Du Bois sought to highlight one trend in particular: the growth and progress of Black Americans in the years since emancipation. His selection of datasets, combined with his (or his students) masterful deployment of color and form, resulted in a series of charts that were as visually striking as they were sociologically profound. After being digitized by the Library of Congress in 2014, the charts have captivated a new generation of visualization designers and aficionados who see in them evidence of how visualization can be enlisted in the service of justice while also advancing the formal possibilities of the field.

As for Du Bois himself, however, both as a scholar who was then pioneering the idea of mixed-methods research, and as a Black man in the United States, he was deeply attuned to the limits of visualization as well as its uses. His scholarly expertise and lived experience together pointed to the fact that, on its own, data visualization could not hope to convey a complete picture of the progress of Black Americans to date, nor could it convey the extent of the obstacles that were required to be overcome. His incorporation of additional forms of visual evidence into his research, combined with his continued insistence on acknowledging the larger social and political context that framed the work, offer us a model for making change in the world that indeed enlists the power of data, while also acknowledging how our own work is far from complete even after visualizing that data for the screen or page.

Although most of 63 charts that Du Bois and his students created for the Paris Exhibition were displayed on the countertops, available for visitors to peruse in any order they chose, the charts were conceived as two distinct sets. The first, The Georgia Negro: A Sociological Study, focused on statistics that had been compiled by Du Bois and his students that related to the Black population of that state. The second was national in scope. Entitled A Series of Statistical Charts Illustrating the Condition of the Descendants of Former Slaves Now in Residence in the United States of America, this set drew from several data sources, including the US Census, in order to put the Black population of the United States in national and international perspectives.

In the exhibition space, Du Bois mounted the introductory chart of each set—a title page of sorts—directly at eye-level against the back wall. Clearly, Du Bois wanted these charts to be seen. Of the two, the introductory chart of The Georgia Negro series was given a particular place of prominence: the center-left position in the row of frames, likely the first image that would catch the eyes of visitors as they entered the room. The image is comprised of a pair of Mercator projections, one of Africa and the other of the Americas, their connection indicated by lines that link key locations, and shading in yellow, black, and brown that suggests additional thematic relationships. As the key below clarifies, what are depicted are the “routes of the African slave trade.” Two epigraphs fill what would otherwise be empty space at the bottom of the chart. The first makes the expository aim of the series explicit: “to illustrate the development of the American Negro in a single typical state of the United States.” The second advances its argument: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.”

These words would reappear several years later in The Souls of Black Folk , where they would become “perhaps Du Bois's most famous indictment of the centrality of race and racism to modern American sociopolitical life,” as architectural historian Mabel O. Wilson explains.But his charts make the same assertion in visual form. Both through his choices about what datasets to visualize, and through his choices about how to visualize them, Du Bois advances a clear argument about the nation's Black citizens: about the progress they had made in the years since emancipation, and about the challenges that remained to be addressed.

More than a century after Playfair introduced his line charts and bar charts to the public, visualizations no longer required lengthy textual explanations in order to be understood. Even still, Du Bois took active steps to ensure that there would be no mistaking the argument of the charts, about the barriers of racism and the progress made nonetheless, by selecting data to visualize such that in not a single bar or area chart does any measure related to his subject trend down. The Black population of Georgia is shown to increase every decade; the number of Black children enrolled in school is similarly shown to be on the rise; land ownership is documented as growing nearly every year of the previous twenty-five; and the assessed value of Black Georgians' property has exploded so exponentially that it requires a wholly new visual form—a bar chart curved into a spiral—for the most recent values to even fit on the page.

Indeed, in this chart and the others that diverge by then-conventional visualization techniques is evidence of an additional argument that—like Playfair's charts—is made through the intentional choice of visual form. This has to do with the as-yet-realized possibilities for Black life if it were supported in its flourishing, rather than be actively suppressed. Consider how the first several charts in the series make use of familiar visual strategies—maps, bar charts, and line graphs—in order to introduce the exhibition's international viewership to the state of Georgia and its significance as an object of study. But the visual style shifts into new terrain once the focus on Georgia's Black residents has been established. A comparative representation of the places where Georgia's Black citizens reside is where Du Bois introduces his iconic spiral, for example, bringing together aspects of the bar chart and the line chart along with this new form of circular graph in order to animate the increasing presence of Black people throughout the state. In a later chart in the series, which documents the decrease in illiteracy rates in the years between 1860 and 1900 , Du Bois makes use of what graphic designer (and contributor to this project) Silas Munro describes as a “lattice-like arrangement,” in which an otherwise standard bar is folded at a right angle in order to further accentuate the decreasing rate of illiteracy over time. Du Bois elaborates upon this technique in a later chart, which compares the numbers of Black property owners, and the value of their properties, in two Georgia cities , building upon his own visual language to represent the progress that had been achieved by the Black residents of Georgia in spite of the efforts of their white compatriots.

Compared to the easily interpretable “picture of the past” that Playfair designed his time-series charts to convey, the sequence of increasingly novel visual forms that characterizes the Georgia Negro series charts seems to ask viewers to imagine future Black progress through the lens of Black creativity: what might come to be if the future of Black America, like the expressive possibilities of data visualization, were also not curtailed by convention and code. Of course Black Americans had already excelled through all normative measures, the more typical charts easily confirmed. But what else might be possible—in terms of contributions to visualization design, or to the nation—if Black Americans could engineer their own charts, and their futures, unconstrained by the “color line”?

Slide 1 of 5
A map of two globes showing the distribution of Black people across the world, indicated by three shades: beige, black, and brown. Several lines connect the African continent to prominent countries in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean along the Atlantic Slave Trade, with a lone white star depicted in the state of Georgia. The caption on the page reads: “This case is devoted to a series of charts, maps, and other devices designed to illustrate the development of the American Negro in a single typical state of the United States. ‘The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.’”
The introductory image of The Georgia Negro: A Social Study, the first set of charts included in the Paris Exposition
This visualization takes attributes from various chart styles to create a new form of graphing evidence for the Black population in Georgia in 1890. Beginning as a horizontal bar graph near the top of the page, a green bar indicates that there are 78,139 Black inhabitants of Georgian cities in cities whose population exceeds 10,000 people. Branching downward to the left, a small blue bar indicates 8,025 Black inhabitants live in cities whose populations are between 5,000 and 10,000 people. A longer bar branches off from the blue bar downward and to the right in a yellow color, indicating 37,699 Black inhabitants in cities whose population is between 2,500 and 5,000 people. The yellow bar connects to a red bar which spirals downward to the center of the page landing around the number 734,952, which indicates the total Black population in the country and its villages.
City and Rural Population. 1890.
A bar diagram of interweaving perpendicular and parallel bars that tracks illiteracy percentages of Black Georgians between 1860 and 1900 every ten years. Each year is listed from earliest to latest, top to bottom, and is connected to its corresponding illiteracy percentage by a bar that, when horizontal, is not shaded in and, when vertical, is colored in black. The four bars begin horizontally and turn downward to connect to their respective percentages, creating a criss-cross pattern. The first bar for the year 1860 measures 99 percent illiteracy in the Black Georgian population, so the horizontal portion of the bar does not extend far into the page. The bar for 1870 measures 92 percent illiteracy, thus the horizontal bar stretches farther than the previous year, but not by much. In 1880, the illiteracy percentage decreased to 81.8 percent, and in 1890, the illiteracy percentage decreased to 67.2 percent, both horizontal bars taking up more space than the previous year(s). Lastly, in 1900, the percentage of illiterate Black Georgians decreased once again to 50 percent of the population, the horizontal bar stretching the width of the chart.
Illiteracy.
A lattice bar chart of overlapping blue and yellow bars representing the land value and number of Black property owners in Savannah, GA (yellow) and Atlanta, GA (blue) between 1880 and 1899. The three pairs of horizontal bars show the amount of Black landowners in Savannah exceeds the amount in Atlanta, while the three pairs of vertical bars reveal that the property value in Atlanta exceeds the value in Savannah. The difference between each pair each year on the chart increases similarly, with a small difference in 1880 for both amounts measured, a more substantial difference in 1890, and a vast difference in 1899 between both the number of Black property owners and the value of property in Savannah and Atlanta.
Negro Property in Two Cities of Georgia.
A map of two globes showing the distribution of Black people across the world, indicated by three shades: beige, black, and brown. Several lines connect the African continent to prominent countries in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean along the Atlantic Slave Trade, with a lone white star depicted in the state of Georgia. The caption on the page reads: “This case is devoted to a series of charts, maps, and other devices designed to illustrate the development of the American Negro in a single typical state of the United States. ‘The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.’”
The introductory image of The Georgia Negro: A Social Study, the first set of charts included in the Paris Exposition
This visualization takes attributes from various chart styles to create a new form of graphing evidence for the Black population in Georgia in 1890. Beginning as a horizontal bar graph near the top of the page, a green bar indicates that there are 78,139 Black inhabitants of Georgian cities in cities whose population exceeds 10,000 people. Branching downward to the left, a small blue bar indicates 8,025 Black inhabitants live in cities whose populations are between 5,000 and 10,000 people. A longer bar branches off from the blue bar downward and to the right in a yellow color, indicating 37,699 Black inhabitants in cities whose population is between 2,500 and 5,000 people. The yellow bar connects to a red bar which spirals downward to the center of the page landing around the number 734,952, which indicates the total Black population in the country and its villages.
City and Rural Population. 1890.
A bar diagram of interweaving perpendicular and parallel bars that tracks illiteracy percentages of Black Georgians between 1860 and 1900 every ten years. Each year is listed from earliest to latest, top to bottom, and is connected to its corresponding illiteracy percentage by a bar that, when horizontal, is not shaded in and, when vertical, is colored in black. The four bars begin horizontally and turn downward to connect to their respective percentages, creating a criss-cross pattern. The first bar for the year 1860 measures 99 percent illiteracy in the Black Georgian population, so the horizontal portion of the bar does not extend far into the page. The bar for 1870 measures 92 percent illiteracy, thus the horizontal bar stretches farther than the previous year, but not by much. In 1880, the illiteracy percentage decreased to 81.8 percent, and in 1890, the illiteracy percentage decreased to 67.2 percent, both horizontal bars taking up more space than the previous year(s). Lastly, in 1900, the percentage of illiterate Black Georgians decreased once again to 50 percent of the population, the horizontal bar stretching the width of the chart.
Illiteracy.
A lattice bar chart of overlapping blue and yellow bars representing the land value and number of Black property owners in Savannah, GA (yellow) and Atlanta, GA (blue) between 1880 and 1899. The three pairs of horizontal bars show the amount of Black landowners in Savannah exceeds the amount in Atlanta, while the three pairs of vertical bars reveal that the property value in Atlanta exceeds the value in Savannah. The difference between each pair each year on the chart increases similarly, with a small difference in 1880 for both amounts measured, a more substantial difference in 1890, and a vast difference in 1899 between both the number of Black property owners and the value of property in Savannah and Atlanta.
Negro Property in Two Cities of Georgia.
A map of two globes showing the distribution of Black people across the world, indicated by three shades: beige, black, and brown. Several lines connect the African continent to prominent countries in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean along the Atlantic Slave Trade, with a lone white star depicted in the state of Georgia. The caption on the page reads: “This case is devoted to a series of charts, maps, and other devices designed to illustrate the development of the American Negro in a single typical state of the United States. ‘The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.’”
The introductory image of The Georgia Negro: A Social Study, the first set of charts included in the Paris Exposition
This visualization takes attributes from various chart styles to create a new form of graphing evidence for the Black population in Georgia in 1890. Beginning as a horizontal bar graph near the top of the page, a green bar indicates that there are 78,139 Black inhabitants of Georgian cities in cities whose population exceeds 10,000 people. Branching downward to the left, a small blue bar indicates 8,025 Black inhabitants live in cities whose populations are between 5,000 and 10,000 people. A longer bar branches off from the blue bar downward and to the right in a yellow color, indicating 37,699 Black inhabitants in cities whose population is between 2,500 and 5,000 people. The yellow bar connects to a red bar which spirals downward to the center of the page landing around the number 734,952, which indicates the total Black population in the country and its villages.
City and Rural Population. 1890.
A bar diagram of interweaving perpendicular and parallel bars that tracks illiteracy percentages of Black Georgians between 1860 and 1900 every ten years. Each year is listed from earliest to latest, top to bottom, and is connected to its corresponding illiteracy percentage by a bar that, when horizontal, is not shaded in and, when vertical, is colored in black. The four bars begin horizontally and turn downward to connect to their respective percentages, creating a criss-cross pattern. The first bar for the year 1860 measures 99 percent illiteracy in the Black Georgian population, so the horizontal portion of the bar does not extend far into the page. The bar for 1870 measures 92 percent illiteracy, thus the horizontal bar stretches farther than the previous year, but not by much. In 1880, the illiteracy percentage decreased to 81.8 percent, and in 1890, the illiteracy percentage decreased to 67.2 percent, both horizontal bars taking up more space than the previous year(s). Lastly, in 1900, the percentage of illiterate Black Georgians decreased once again to 50 percent of the population, the horizontal bar stretching the width of the chart.
Illiteracy.
A lattice bar chart of overlapping blue and yellow bars representing the land value and number of Black property owners in Savannah, GA (yellow) and Atlanta, GA (blue) between 1880 and 1899. The three pairs of horizontal bars show the amount of Black landowners in Savannah exceeds the amount in Atlanta, while the three pairs of vertical bars reveal that the property value in Atlanta exceeds the value in Savannah. The difference between each pair each year on the chart increases similarly, with a small difference in 1880 for both amounts measured, a more substantial difference in 1890, and a vast difference in 1899 between both the number of Black property owners and the value of property in Savannah and Atlanta.
Negro Property in Two Cities of Georgia.

Du Bois continues to affirm these imaginative possibilities through the graphical innovation of the second series of charts, which focuses on the “condition of the descendants of former African slaves now resident in the United States of America,” as its introductory chart explains. In this series, Du Bois was also joined by his students as co-designers, as a later section of this chapter will further explore. Here, what is significant is how, in documenting the upward progress of Black Americans in a national and international context, Du Bois and his students make use of comparisons to other populations—and to other charts—in order to affirm a narrative of progress and possibility with respect to Black Americans' social, intellectual, and economic lives.

A clear but unnamed interlocutor in this series is the US Federal Government, which for each of the three previous national censuses, had created a statistical atlas that visualized the data collected at national scale. The most recent of these atlases, based on the 1890 Census, had been published only two years earlier, in 1898. Most famous today for its visual depiction of the closing of the American frontier—a symbol to the settler-colonial nation that its goals of “manifest destiny” had run its course, and to Native peoples that their displacement was complete—the Statistical Atlas of the United States , based on the results of the eleventh census in its own time was motivated by a more pedagogical goal: “popularizing and extending the study of statistics.”

The atlas was overseen by the then-chief geographer for the US Geological Survey, Henry Gannett, and was comprised of 409 maps and diagrams. The sequence began, just as Du Bois's did, by introducing viewers to the statistics on population statistics on population T. Through by-then-standard bar charts, pie charts, and line graphs, as well as its own creative use of pattern and visual form, the atlas included, for example, a prototypical bump chart that ranked each state according to its population ; a map that illustrated the spatial distribution of the nation's male population ; and another that illustrated the spatial distribution of the nation's Black population. . (Another chart usedarea charts in small multiples in order to compare certain states' Black and white populations ).

While race was certainly of concern in the census—indeed, it remains one of the lighting rod issues of the census even today—it was not the Statistical Atlas's main concern. Reading further into the intent conveyed through the sequence of maps, after an early series of charts that visualize the nation's Black population, the focus of the atlas shifts, turning first to the nation's immigrant population before expanding outward to consider other features altogether: the population's age and gender breakdown , the country's increasingly diversereligious groupings , theoccupations of its inhabitants , and more.

Slide 1 of 15
A page displaying the outlines of ten countries drawn around the United States, which lies in the center of the paper and is the only country whose shape is filled in with black ink. The countries are, going clockwise from the top right: Spain, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The title in English heads the page, just above its French translation. The names of all countries except the U.S. are in French.
Negro Population in the United States Compared with the Total Popuation of Other Countries.
A page displaying the outlines of ten countries drawn around the United States, which lies in the center of the paper and is the only country whose shape is filled in with black ink. The countries are, going clockwise from the top right: Spain, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The title in English heads the page, just above its French translation. The names of all countries except the U.S. are in French.
Negro Population in the United States Compared with the Total Popuation of Other Countries.
A circle, pinwheel-like chart that illustrates the disparity between the amount of white and Black people who worked the same occupations in the United States. The circle is outlined in red ink, while the remainder of the chart is sparse with information. Divided into six sections, progressing from the top middle section clockwise, the chart displays the ratio between those who worked in all occupations, in manufacturing and mechanical industries, trade and transportation, domestic and personal service, professions, and agriculture. In each category, six black slices remain smaller compared to the empty white space in the same category, which represents the amount of white workers in each field. The agriculture and domestic and personal service sections show a larger Black population than the other occupations due to the thicker black slices on the chart, though they still account for, at best, a fifth of the total surface area of either the agriculture or domestic service category. No key or numerical information is provided on the chart; the viewer is left to surmise the balance or imbalance of how many Black versus white people work each job based on the proportion of white space compared to black space in each section of the circle chart.
Proportion of Whites and Negroes in the different classes of occupation in the United States
A graphic of two bars comparing the number of enslaved and freed Black folk between the years 1860 and 1890. The bar located in the bottom left corner of the page shows the percentage of those enslaved and freed in 1860 and is divided into a small top section colored in green and a large section on the bottom colored in black. Bold black text within the green component of the bar indicates that 11% of the Black population was categorized as “free laborers,” while bold red text in the black portion indicates that 89% were “slaves.” The second bar, located on the right side of the page, shows the status of Black folk after Emancipation in 1890 and is divided into a small red section at the top and a larger green section that colors in the remainder of the bar. The red portion of the bar details, in black lettering, that 19% of the Black population belonged to a “peasant proprietor” class, or did not own land, while 81% of Black folk, detailed in black lettering in the green section, were tenants. The bar for 1890 is connected to the first 1860 bar by several faded, dotted lines which extend outward from one point along the right edge of the green section of the first bar to many points along the left edge of the green section of the second. The green coloring connects the two bars to indicate the amount of land-owning, free Black men and women exploded within just thirty years, or in one generation. Above the first bar and next to the second, a caption reads: “In 1890 nearly one fifth of them owned their own homes and farms. This advance was accomplished entirely without state aid, and in the face of proscriptive laws,” with a French translation of the sentences below the English text.
The Rise of the Negroes from Slavery to Freedom in One Generation
A multicolored pyramid that depicts the various types of writing formats in which Black people published. The tip of the pyramid is a small blue triangle, representing 3 magazines that were published. The following quadrangle is similarly small and colored in red, representing 3 daily papers that were published. The next shape is yellow and slightly larger, showing that 11 school papers were created and distributed. The next section is blue again and takes up nearly half of the pyramid, depicting that 136 weekly papers in total were published and distributed by Black publishers. The last segment of the pyramid is brown and shows the total of all Black publishing efforts, which amounted to 153 newspapers or periodicals.
American Negro newspapers and periodicals.
Distribution of the population of the United States: 1890
A bar chart where six curving bars of color spiral toward the center of the page to indicate the value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Black Georgians from 1875 to 1899. The colors are all aligned in a row at the top of the page from 1875 to 1899, and each color corresponds to a year and value dollar amount. The topmost bar for 1875 is pink and is the smallest curving line, just barely beginning to curve, with the value of household furniture coming to $21,186. A blue curving bar falls just under the pink to represent 1880’s value of kitchen and household furniture, reaching $498,532. The next curving bar is brown for the year 1885 with a value of Black-owned furniture in Georgia reaching $736,170. Beneath the brown bar is a yellow curving bar for 1890, for which $1,173,624 was assessed to be the value of household and kitchen items owned by Black Georgians. The second bottom-most curving light gray bar shows that the value for Black-owned furniture in 1895 was $1,322,694. The last curving bar is red for the year 1899 and indicates that the value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Black Georgians reached $1,434,975. Each curving bar grows a bit longer than the previous bar, demonstrating the increasing value of furniture Black Georgians owned in the twenty-five years leading up to the Paris Exposition.
Assessed Value of Household and Kitchen Furniture Owned by Georgia Negroes.
Rank of states and territories in population at each census: 1790 - 1890
The predominating sex: 1890
Proportion of the Colored to the aggregate population: 1890
Distribution of the Colored population of the United States: 1890
Composition of the foreign-born population: 1890
Age and sex, in percentage of each element of the population: 1890
Composition of church membership of the states and territories: 1890
Distribution of those engaged in certain selected occupations, by color and nationality: 1890
A page displaying the outlines of ten countries drawn around the United States, which lies in the center of the paper and is the only country whose shape is filled in with black ink. The countries are, going clockwise from the top right: Spain, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The title in English heads the page, just above its French translation. The names of all countries except the U.S. are in French.
Negro Population in the United States Compared with the Total Popuation of Other Countries.
A page displaying the outlines of ten countries drawn around the United States, which lies in the center of the paper and is the only country whose shape is filled in with black ink. The countries are, going clockwise from the top right: Spain, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The title in English heads the page, just above its French translation. The names of all countries except the U.S. are in French.
Negro Population in the United States Compared with the Total Popuation of Other Countries.
A circle, pinwheel-like chart that illustrates the disparity between the amount of white and Black people who worked the same occupations in the United States. The circle is outlined in red ink, while the remainder of the chart is sparse with information. Divided into six sections, progressing from the top middle section clockwise, the chart displays the ratio between those who worked in all occupations, in manufacturing and mechanical industries, trade and transportation, domestic and personal service, professions, and agriculture. In each category, six black slices remain smaller compared to the empty white space in the same category, which represents the amount of white workers in each field. The agriculture and domestic and personal service sections show a larger Black population than the other occupations due to the thicker black slices on the chart, though they still account for, at best, a fifth of the total surface area of either the agriculture or domestic service category. No key or numerical information is provided on the chart; the viewer is left to surmise the balance or imbalance of how many Black versus white people work each job based on the proportion of white space compared to black space in each section of the circle chart.
Proportion of Whites and Negroes in the different classes of occupation in the United States
A graphic of two bars comparing the number of enslaved and freed Black folk between the years 1860 and 1890. The bar located in the bottom left corner of the page shows the percentage of those enslaved and freed in 1860 and is divided into a small top section colored in green and a large section on the bottom colored in black. Bold black text within the green component of the bar indicates that 11% of the Black population was categorized as “free laborers,” while bold red text in the black portion indicates that 89% were “slaves.” The second bar, located on the right side of the page, shows the status of Black folk after Emancipation in 1890 and is divided into a small red section at the top and a larger green section that colors in the remainder of the bar. The red portion of the bar details, in black lettering, that 19% of the Black population belonged to a “peasant proprietor” class, or did not own land, while 81% of Black folk, detailed in black lettering in the green section, were tenants. The bar for 1890 is connected to the first 1860 bar by several faded, dotted lines which extend outward from one point along the right edge of the green section of the first bar to many points along the left edge of the green section of the second. The green coloring connects the two bars to indicate the amount of land-owning, free Black men and women exploded within just thirty years, or in one generation. Above the first bar and next to the second, a caption reads: “In 1890 nearly one fifth of them owned their own homes and farms. This advance was accomplished entirely without state aid, and in the face of proscriptive laws,” with a French translation of the sentences below the English text.
The Rise of the Negroes from Slavery to Freedom in One Generation
A multicolored pyramid that depicts the various types of writing formats in which Black people published. The tip of the pyramid is a small blue triangle, representing 3 magazines that were published. The following quadrangle is similarly small and colored in red, representing 3 daily papers that were published. The next shape is yellow and slightly larger, showing that 11 school papers were created and distributed. The next section is blue again and takes up nearly half of the pyramid, depicting that 136 weekly papers in total were published and distributed by Black publishers. The last segment of the pyramid is brown and shows the total of all Black publishing efforts, which amounted to 153 newspapers or periodicals.
American Negro newspapers and periodicals.
Distribution of the population of the United States: 1890
A bar chart where six curving bars of color spiral toward the center of the page to indicate the value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Black Georgians from 1875 to 1899. The colors are all aligned in a row at the top of the page from 1875 to 1899, and each color corresponds to a year and value dollar amount. The topmost bar for 1875 is pink and is the smallest curving line, just barely beginning to curve, with the value of household furniture coming to $21,186. A blue curving bar falls just under the pink to represent 1880’s value of kitchen and household furniture, reaching $498,532. The next curving bar is brown for the year 1885 with a value of Black-owned furniture in Georgia reaching $736,170. Beneath the brown bar is a yellow curving bar for 1890, for which $1,173,624 was assessed to be the value of household and kitchen items owned by Black Georgians. The second bottom-most curving light gray bar shows that the value for Black-owned furniture in 1895 was $1,322,694. The last curving bar is red for the year 1899 and indicates that the value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Black Georgians reached $1,434,975. Each curving bar grows a bit longer than the previous bar, demonstrating the increasing value of furniture Black Georgians owned in the twenty-five years leading up to the Paris Exposition.
Assessed Value of Household and Kitchen Furniture Owned by Georgia Negroes.
Rank of states and territories in population at each census: 1790 - 1890
The predominating sex: 1890
Proportion of the Colored to the aggregate population: 1890
Distribution of the Colored population of the United States: 1890
Composition of the foreign-born population: 1890
Age and sex, in percentage of each element of the population: 1890
Composition of church membership of the states and territories: 1890
Distribution of those engaged in certain selected occupations, by color and nationality: 1890
A page displaying the outlines of ten countries drawn around the United States, which lies in the center of the paper and is the only country whose shape is filled in with black ink. The countries are, going clockwise from the top right: Spain, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The title in English heads the page, just above its French translation. The names of all countries except the U.S. are in French.
Negro Population in the United States Compared with the Total Popuation of Other Countries.
A page displaying the outlines of ten countries drawn around the United States, which lies in the center of the paper and is the only country whose shape is filled in with black ink. The countries are, going clockwise from the top right: Spain, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The title in English heads the page, just above its French translation. The names of all countries except the U.S. are in French.
Negro Population in the United States Compared with the Total Popuation of Other Countries.
A circle, pinwheel-like chart that illustrates the disparity between the amount of white and Black people who worked the same occupations in the United States. The circle is outlined in red ink, while the remainder of the chart is sparse with information. Divided into six sections, progressing from the top middle section clockwise, the chart displays the ratio between those who worked in all occupations, in manufacturing and mechanical industries, trade and transportation, domestic and personal service, professions, and agriculture. In each category, six black slices remain smaller compared to the empty white space in the same category, which represents the amount of white workers in each field. The agriculture and domestic and personal service sections show a larger Black population than the other occupations due to the thicker black slices on the chart, though they still account for, at best, a fifth of the total surface area of either the agriculture or domestic service category. No key or numerical information is provided on the chart; the viewer is left to surmise the balance or imbalance of how many Black versus white people work each job based on the proportion of white space compared to black space in each section of the circle chart.
Proportion of Whites and Negroes in the different classes of occupation in the United States
A graphic of two bars comparing the number of enslaved and freed Black folk between the years 1860 and 1890. The bar located in the bottom left corner of the page shows the percentage of those enslaved and freed in 1860 and is divided into a small top section colored in green and a large section on the bottom colored in black. Bold black text within the green component of the bar indicates that 11% of the Black population was categorized as “free laborers,” while bold red text in the black portion indicates that 89% were “slaves.” The second bar, located on the right side of the page, shows the status of Black folk after Emancipation in 1890 and is divided into a small red section at the top and a larger green section that colors in the remainder of the bar. The red portion of the bar details, in black lettering, that 19% of the Black population belonged to a “peasant proprietor” class, or did not own land, while 81% of Black folk, detailed in black lettering in the green section, were tenants. The bar for 1890 is connected to the first 1860 bar by several faded, dotted lines which extend outward from one point along the right edge of the green section of the first bar to many points along the left edge of the green section of the second. The green coloring connects the two bars to indicate the amount of land-owning, free Black men and women exploded within just thirty years, or in one generation. Above the first bar and next to the second, a caption reads: “In 1890 nearly one fifth of them owned their own homes and farms. This advance was accomplished entirely without state aid, and in the face of proscriptive laws,” with a French translation of the sentences below the English text.
The Rise of the Negroes from Slavery to Freedom in One Generation
A multicolored pyramid that depicts the various types of writing formats in which Black people published. The tip of the pyramid is a small blue triangle, representing 3 magazines that were published. The following quadrangle is similarly small and colored in red, representing 3 daily papers that were published. The next shape is yellow and slightly larger, showing that 11 school papers were created and distributed. The next section is blue again and takes up nearly half of the pyramid, depicting that 136 weekly papers in total were published and distributed by Black publishers. The last segment of the pyramid is brown and shows the total of all Black publishing efforts, which amounted to 153 newspapers or periodicals.
American Negro newspapers and periodicals.
Distribution of the population of the United States: 1890
A bar chart where six curving bars of color spiral toward the center of the page to indicate the value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Black Georgians from 1875 to 1899. The colors are all aligned in a row at the top of the page from 1875 to 1899, and each color corresponds to a year and value dollar amount. The topmost bar for 1875 is pink and is the smallest curving line, just barely beginning to curve, with the value of household furniture coming to $21,186. A blue curving bar falls just under the pink to represent 1880’s value of kitchen and household furniture, reaching $498,532. The next curving bar is brown for the year 1885 with a value of Black-owned furniture in Georgia reaching $736,170. Beneath the brown bar is a yellow curving bar for 1890, for which $1,173,624 was assessed to be the value of household and kitchen items owned by Black Georgians. The second bottom-most curving light gray bar shows that the value for Black-owned furniture in 1895 was $1,322,694. The last curving bar is red for the year 1899 and indicates that the value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Black Georgians reached $1,434,975. Each curving bar grows a bit longer than the previous bar, demonstrating the increasing value of furniture Black Georgians owned in the twenty-five years leading up to the Paris Exposition.
Assessed Value of Household and Kitchen Furniture Owned by Georgia Negroes.
Rank of states and territories in population at each census: 1790 - 1890
The predominating sex: 1890
Proportion of the Colored to the aggregate population: 1890
Distribution of the Colored population of the United States: 1890
Composition of the foreign-born population: 1890
Age and sex, in percentage of each element of the population: 1890
Composition of church membership of the states and territories: 1890
Distribution of those engaged in certain selected occupations, by color and nationality: 1890

Du Bois's charts were clearly influenced by the Statistical Atlas. Several of his own diagrams mirror the form of those created for the atlas. Du Bois's graduated area chart of “The Amalgamation of White and Black elements of the population in the United States,” for example, takes the same visual form as the chart in the Statistical Atlas depicting “Growth of the Elements of the Population: 1790-1890.” Similarly, the combined area and bar chart form that Du Bois employs for his chart of “Conjugal Condition of American Negroes according to Age Periods” is the very same as the chart in the Statistical Atlas depicting “Conjugal Condition of the Population by Age and Sex, in proportion to the total number of each group.” The notable difference within each pair is, of course, Du Bois's focus on the Black population alone. And for Du Bois, this difference in data was the point: the nation's Black population was itself diverse, and it was thriving. By adopting the visual typologies of the Statistical Atlas in order to make his claims, Du Bois underscores his textual argument about the “small nation of people” within the larger United States by creating a national statistical atlas of their own.

Growth of the elements of the population: 1790 to 1890
Growth of the elements of the population: 1790 to 1890 Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
A chart that shows the increasing number of Black and Black multiracial residents in the United States from 1800 to 1890. Drawn resembling a steep mountaintop, which begins at 1800 on the right of the page and falls to 1890 at the bottom left, the chart’s downward motion emphasizes how the range and scope of blackness shifted during the nineteenth century. To depict what Du Bois labels as the “amalgamation” of the growing number of Black people in the United States and their shifting phenotypes, the chart sections off three discrete racial categories by hue, which lighten gradually from black to white. The Black population is colored in black and implies that this portion of the population showed no visual trace of interracial coupling. To its right, the color grows slightly lighter as it nears what Du Bois labels as the “mulatto” or multiracial population, which is split between a light brown and a dark yellow color to depict the portion of the Black population that announces a white presence in one’s lineage. The white population section is predominately drawn with the paper’s off-white hue, except for a light yellow gradient where it comes into contact with the multiracial population, to its left. There is no quantitative data associated with the white population. While no percentages or numbers are stated in the slimmer sections tracking the 1800s or 1840s, the chart shows that by 1860 the Black population amounted to 3,542,147 people–90% of all Black people in America–and the multiracial population made up the remaining 10% of the total Black population. In 1890, while both grew in size, the Black population decreased to 85% (6,337,980 people) while the Black multiracial population increased to 15% (1,113,063 people).
The Amalgamation of the White and Black elements of the population in the United States. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-33916.
Conjugal condition of the population by sex, general nativity, parental nativity, and color in proportion to the total number of each element, 1890
Conjugal condition of the population by sex, general nativity, parental nativity, and color in proportion to the total number of each element, 1890 Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
Part grid and part area chart, this colorful graphic shows the marital status of Black men and women in the United States according to their age. The horizontal X axis measures the percentage (from 0 to 100%) of men and women who are single, married, or widowed, and the vertical Y axis measures age. The age increments from bottom to top, are listed as follows: 0 to 15; 15 to 20; 20 to 25; 25 to 30; 30 to 35; 35 to 45; 45 to 55; 55 to 65; and over age 65. Divided vertically in the middle, the left side of the grid tracks Black men’s marital status, and the right side measures Black women’s. Green space, which indicates widowers, occupies each top corner and falls vertically, serving as a border to the majority of the other categories; red space sits next to the green to show who is married; and blue lies in the center and along the bottom next to the red area to depict those who are single. Because of its near symmetry and vibrancy, the graphic looks like an abstract image of a city at sunset, with the central blue area resembling a silhouetted large building, and the red and green areas on either side of the blue depicting the sky.
Conjugal condition of American Negroes according to age periods. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-33915.

Today, Du Bois's charts are often shared as single images, embedded in a post on social media, or—as in the case of Du Bois's Data Portraits, the 2018 volume that compiled the charts in print for the first time-bound as a dazzling, full-color book. But in their own time, the charts were intended to be viewed in relation the photographs that accompanied them on the exhibit's countertops and walls. And photographs there were—over 500 of them, documenting Black Americans at home, at school, and at work, which Du Bois had commissioned from a fleet of Black photographers from Atlanta and beyond. In a reflection published several months after his return from Paris, Du Bois explains that he included the photographs to challenge “conventional American ideas,” although he does not specify what particular ideas he intended to challenge. Presumably, these ideas included racist assumptions about what the nation's Black citizenry looked like, what social and professional roles they occupied, and the extent of what they could achieve.

In her in-depth analysis of the photographs, art historian Shawn Michelle Smith connects them to Du Bois's idea of double consciousness, “the sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of another,” as articulated most famously in The Souls of Black Folk.With the photos, which not only featured black citizens but were also created by them, Du Bois sought to present to a predominantly white international audience a view of how Black Americans saw themselves.

Considered alongside the photographs, it becomes possible to understand the charts as pushing back against this double consciousness through an additional visual form. In their discussion of the charts, Battle-Baptiste and Rusert elaborate this line of thinking, emphasizing how Du Bois understood double consciousness as a “kind of 'second sight' that might be transformed from a curse into a “gift” that offered a unique and superior perspective on turn-of-the-century race relations, sociability, and even existence itself.” In direct comparison to the Statistical Atlas, the charts might be interpreted as expressing this “superior perspective” on the status of race in America at the time. Du Bois's narrower focus on the data of Black Americans allowed him to visualize the deleterious effects of racism with more precision, as well as to provide a clearer view of what the nation's Black citizens had, despite this racism, still managed to achieve. Here was the “empiricism of lived experience,” to quote contemporary data activist Anita Gurumurthy, that, for example, Clarkson's “Description of a Slave Ship,” which was designed without the inclusion of the enslaved, clearly lacked.

At the same time, Du Bois's decision to pair the photographs with the charts also points to his awareness of the limits of what either medium could achieve on its own. While the photographs could document the richness of individual lives, they could not possibly document the life of every one of the nation's Black citizens. Conversely, while the charts could present powerful evidence of generalized trends, they could not expose the individual people behind the data, nor could they express the individual stories that reflected the warp and weft of each person's life. Considered as a complementary pair, however, the charts and the photographs recall another visual technology of that era, the stereoscope, whose form is suggested by the double-projection layout of the Georgia Negro's introductory chart. The stereoscope was a device that spliced together two views of the same image, one in each eye, creating the illusion of three-dimensional depth. Similarly, Du Bois understood the charts and the photographs as two parts of a larger whole. While each was legible on its own, the most complete—and therefore most accurate—picture was gained by viewing them together.

Slide 1 of 4
A spare bar chart of various statistics relating to Black religious organizing. The topmost bar stretches most of the page’s width to show the 23,462 church organizations in the country. The second bar depicts the number of church edifices, which runs the entire width of the page and comes to 23,770 buildings. The next statistic is a monetary amount rather than a bar, set in a bold font, to claim the total value of these church properties, which is written as $26,626,448 or 137,960,860 francs. The last bar at the bottom of the page, which runs the entire width of the page, represents the 2,673,977 communicants who run, organize, and attend these religious events. For reference, underneath the communicants bar, a smaller bar shows the population of New York in comparison, which reaches about three-fourths of the length depicting Black communicants.
Side-by-side of photograph of African American men, women and children outside of church and chart of Statistics of Negro Church Organizations.
A multicolored pyramid that depicts the various types of writing formats in which Black people published. The tip of the pyramid is a small blue triangle, representing 3 magazines that were published. The following quadrangle is similarly small and colored in red, representing 3 daily papers that were published. The next shape is yellow and slightly larger, showing that 11 school papers were created and distributed. The next section is blue again and takes up nearly half of the pyramid, depicting that 136 weekly papers in total were published and distributed by Black publishers. The last segment of the pyramid is brown and shows the total of all Black publishing efforts, which amounted to 153 newspapers or periodicals.
Side-by-side of photograph of Press room of the Planet newspaper, Richmond, Virginia and chart of American Negro newspapers and periodicals.
A horizontal bar chart showing various occupations that Black men over 10 years of age worked in 1890 and the corresponding amount of workers per occupation. The number of workers per occupation diminishes as the list goes down. The top occupation indicates that 98,400 men worked as agricultural laborers, and the red bar rounds to show the mass of people employed in this category. The number of workers in the next category, farmers and planters, amounts to 63,012 people, and the bar stretches the width of the paper. Following the first two occupations, the number per category goes down significantly, with 29,732 men working as generic “laborers,” 7,440 men working as steam railway employees, 7,000 working as servants, 4,390 as draymen or hackmen, and 3,761 working as carpenters and joiners. After these top individual jobs are noted, the remaining fifteen jobs (from 2,471 men who work at sawmills to the last category of 519 men who work as gardeners and florists) are combined into one bar that is about half the size of the laborers category.
Side-by-side of photograph Portrait of African American Carpenters union, Jacksonville, Florida and chart of Occupations of Georgia Negroes.
A bar chart detailing various areas of study that are offered in Georgia’s schools and how many Black students are enrolled in each. The courses of study are labeled as the following, from top to bottom with a growing number of students in each subsequent category: business, classical, professional, scientific, normal, and industrial. The number of students in the industrial category is much larger than the others, amounting to 2,252 students, whereas the number of students taking courses from business to normal goes from 12 students to 383, respectively. To demonstrate the volume of students studying industrial arts, the bar extends the length of the page and curves downward twice so the bar may continue to run horizontally.
Side-by-side of photograph Extempo club of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. and chart of Number of Negro students taking the various courses of study offered in Georgia schools.
A spare bar chart of various statistics relating to Black religious organizing. The topmost bar stretches most of the page’s width to show the 23,462 church organizations in the country. The second bar depicts the number of church edifices, which runs the entire width of the page and comes to 23,770 buildings. The next statistic is a monetary amount rather than a bar, set in a bold font, to claim the total value of these church properties, which is written as $26,626,448 or 137,960,860 francs. The last bar at the bottom of the page, which runs the entire width of the page, represents the 2,673,977 communicants who run, organize, and attend these religious events. For reference, underneath the communicants bar, a smaller bar shows the population of New York in comparison, which reaches about three-fourths of the length depicting Black communicants.
Side-by-side of photograph of African American men, women and children outside of church and chart of Statistics of Negro Church Organizations.
A multicolored pyramid that depicts the various types of writing formats in which Black people published. The tip of the pyramid is a small blue triangle, representing 3 magazines that were published. The following quadrangle is similarly small and colored in red, representing 3 daily papers that were published. The next shape is yellow and slightly larger, showing that 11 school papers were created and distributed. The next section is blue again and takes up nearly half of the pyramid, depicting that 136 weekly papers in total were published and distributed by Black publishers. The last segment of the pyramid is brown and shows the total of all Black publishing efforts, which amounted to 153 newspapers or periodicals.
Side-by-side of photograph of Press room of the Planet newspaper, Richmond, Virginia and chart of American Negro newspapers and periodicals.
A horizontal bar chart showing various occupations that Black men over 10 years of age worked in 1890 and the corresponding amount of workers per occupation. The number of workers per occupation diminishes as the list goes down. The top occupation indicates that 98,400 men worked as agricultural laborers, and the red bar rounds to show the mass of people employed in this category. The number of workers in the next category, farmers and planters, amounts to 63,012 people, and the bar stretches the width of the paper. Following the first two occupations, the number per category goes down significantly, with 29,732 men working as generic “laborers,” 7,440 men working as steam railway employees, 7,000 working as servants, 4,390 as draymen or hackmen, and 3,761 working as carpenters and joiners. After these top individual jobs are noted, the remaining fifteen jobs (from 2,471 men who work at sawmills to the last category of 519 men who work as gardeners and florists) are combined into one bar that is about half the size of the laborers category.
Side-by-side of photograph Portrait of African American Carpenters union, Jacksonville, Florida and chart of Occupations of Georgia Negroes.
A bar chart detailing various areas of study that are offered in Georgia’s schools and how many Black students are enrolled in each. The courses of study are labeled as the following, from top to bottom with a growing number of students in each subsequent category: business, classical, professional, scientific, normal, and industrial. The number of students in the industrial category is much larger than the others, amounting to 2,252 students, whereas the number of students taking courses from business to normal goes from 12 students to 383, respectively. To demonstrate the volume of students studying industrial arts, the bar extends the length of the page and curves downward twice so the bar may continue to run horizontally.
Side-by-side of photograph Extempo club of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. and chart of Number of Negro students taking the various courses of study offered in Georgia schools.
A spare bar chart of various statistics relating to Black religious organizing. The topmost bar stretches most of the page’s width to show the 23,462 church organizations in the country. The second bar depicts the number of church edifices, which runs the entire width of the page and comes to 23,770 buildings. The next statistic is a monetary amount rather than a bar, set in a bold font, to claim the total value of these church properties, which is written as $26,626,448 or 137,960,860 francs. The last bar at the bottom of the page, which runs the entire width of the page, represents the 2,673,977 communicants who run, organize, and attend these religious events. For reference, underneath the communicants bar, a smaller bar shows the population of New York in comparison, which reaches about three-fourths of the length depicting Black communicants.
Side-by-side of photograph of African American men, women and children outside of church and chart of Statistics of Negro Church Organizations.
A multicolored pyramid that depicts the various types of writing formats in which Black people published. The tip of the pyramid is a small blue triangle, representing 3 magazines that were published. The following quadrangle is similarly small and colored in red, representing 3 daily papers that were published. The next shape is yellow and slightly larger, showing that 11 school papers were created and distributed. The next section is blue again and takes up nearly half of the pyramid, depicting that 136 weekly papers in total were published and distributed by Black publishers. The last segment of the pyramid is brown and shows the total of all Black publishing efforts, which amounted to 153 newspapers or periodicals.
Side-by-side of photograph of Press room of the Planet newspaper, Richmond, Virginia and chart of American Negro newspapers and periodicals.
A horizontal bar chart showing various occupations that Black men over 10 years of age worked in 1890 and the corresponding amount of workers per occupation. The number of workers per occupation diminishes as the list goes down. The top occupation indicates that 98,400 men worked as agricultural laborers, and the red bar rounds to show the mass of people employed in this category. The number of workers in the next category, farmers and planters, amounts to 63,012 people, and the bar stretches the width of the paper. Following the first two occupations, the number per category goes down significantly, with 29,732 men working as generic “laborers,” 7,440 men working as steam railway employees, 7,000 working as servants, 4,390 as draymen or hackmen, and 3,761 working as carpenters and joiners. After these top individual jobs are noted, the remaining fifteen jobs (from 2,471 men who work at sawmills to the last category of 519 men who work as gardeners and florists) are combined into one bar that is about half the size of the laborers category.
Side-by-side of photograph Portrait of African American Carpenters union, Jacksonville, Florida and chart of Occupations of Georgia Negroes.
A bar chart detailing various areas of study that are offered in Georgia’s schools and how many Black students are enrolled in each. The courses of study are labeled as the following, from top to bottom with a growing number of students in each subsequent category: business, classical, professional, scientific, normal, and industrial. The number of students in the industrial category is much larger than the others, amounting to 2,252 students, whereas the number of students taking courses from business to normal goes from 12 students to 383, respectively. To demonstrate the volume of students studying industrial arts, the bar extends the length of the page and curves downward twice so the bar may continue to run horizontally.
Side-by-side of photograph Extempo club of Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. and chart of Number of Negro students taking the various courses of study offered in Georgia schools.

This is another version of the epistemological pluralism that the previous chapter, on Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, has explored. But more than Peabody allowed herself to admit in writing, and certainly more than her empirical-epistemological forebears, Du Bois was explicit about the fact that there were aspects of human experience—and therefore knowledge—that data visualization could not ever hope to convey. Indeed, I believe that Du Bois's decision to include charts and photographs alongside each other on the walls and counters of the Paris Exhibition is an outward reflection of his own epistemological soul-searching, an activity in which Du Bois, in the months leading up to exhibition, was deeply engaged-

When Du Bois first arrived at Atlanta University, he was determined to advance a quantitative approach to sociological work. As he recalls in his 1940 autobiography, Dusk of Dawn, “I was going to study the facts, any and all facts, concerning the American Negro and his plight, and by measurement and comparison and research, work up to any valid generalization which I could.” Here we see the strength of Du Bois's belief in the power of “facts”—the more facts the better—when they could be enlisted in the service of inductive reasoning, analyzed and aggregated to point towards larger claims.

But after only a year in the South—and just a few months before he began to assemble the materials for Paris Exposition—Du Bois experienced what can only be described as an epistemological epiphany, one brought about not by any new research but instead by his own first-hand evidence of how white supremacy restricted any and all of the work he might do. In Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois narrates this transformation in almost metaphysical terms: “At the very time when my studies were most successful, there cut across this plan which I had as a scientist, a red ray which could not be ignored.”

This “red ray” was no abstraction. It had a specific and horrific source: the lynching of a man named Sam Hose, which had taken place just outside of Atlanta, on April 23, 1899. Hose had been suspected of killing his landlord's wife, and Du Bois had the idea to write an essay about the case for the Atlanta Constitution, the leading newspaper of the South. He intended to approach it as he would any other inquiry: through a social-scientific lens. He recalls how drafted a “careful and reasoned statement concerning the evident facts.” But while walking from the Atlanta University campus to the newspaper office—he planned to deliver the statement in person—Du Bois learned of a gruesome new turn of events: Hose had been lynched, and his body parts were rumored to be on display in a storefront that Du Bois himself would soon pass on his walk. Du Bois turned around and went home, his statement never to see the light of day.

While Du Bois's desire to publish a statement on the “facts” of the case was extinguished at that point, he continued to contemplate—deeply—the larger function of his research. As he narrates in Dusk of Dawn:

“Two considerations thereafter broke in upon my work and eventually disrupted it: first, one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved; and secondly, there was no such definite demand for scientific work of the sort that I was doing. I regarded it as axiomatic that the world wanted to learn the truth and if the truth was sought with even approximate accuracy and painstaking devotion, the world would gladly support the effort.”
W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, pp. 67-8.

From these lines—which Du Bois echoes in an autobiographical audio interview recorded in 1961—it becomes clear that he emerged from the incident with a greater awareness of the limits of his inductive, data-driven approach to advancing knowledge, just as he registered the heightened stakes of pursuing that knowledge and communicating it to the public. The violence brought about by centuries of white supremacy, Du Bois realized at that moment, demanded a different epistemological charge: not an adherence to any particular method, but instead a broader attempt to describe “the truth.” Thus when Du Bois turned to the Paris Exhibition in several months' time, it was not facts or data, but instead this “truth”—the experience and effects of living within, continually resisting, and thriving in spite of a racist regime—that Du Bois sought to give visual form. He did this through the charts and the photographs that he installed together on the walls, and in the presence of the Black Codes on the bookcases below.

A nested circle chart resembling a bull’s-eye that shows the valuation of all taxable Black-owned property in Georgia between the years 1875-1900. The innermost circle is black with white numbering that shows, in 1875, the valuation of taxable Black-owned Georgian property was $5,393,885. The ring surrounding the black circle is brown and shows the valuation of taxable Black-owned property in 1880 was $5,764,293. The next outermost ring is thicker and blue, indicating an increase in taxable property in 1885 to $8,153,390. An even thicker yellow ring surrounds the blue, showing $12,322,003 in 1890. The second outermost ring is smaller and gray and indicates the valuation in 1895 to be $12,941,230. The final outermost circle is red, similarly thin, and shows that the valuation of all taxable Black-owned property in Georgia in 1899 reached $13,447,423. The circle chart is drawn so that each ring has a protruding triangle or point that reaches inward to the 1870 black center. With each overlapping circle, the intrusive triangles become thicker and are overlaid by the other rings’s colors, creating a hypnotic effect as if each circle is being torn back to reveal the black center, emphasized by each triangle’s jagged edges.
Assessed Valuation of All Taxable Property Owned by Georgia Negroes. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-33884.

Du Bois's nuanced consideration of the uses and the limits of data and its visualization, in the context of his larger goal of pursing “the truth,” helps to explain why his charts are often referenced in the context of current conversations about data and its utility for advancing racial justice claims. They are also often, like Playfair's recreated with contemporary tools.” But what is revealed through the process of recreating Du Bois's charts—like the goals of his original research—extends far beyond a demonstration of mastery over the techniques themselves. To be sure, the originality of Du Bois's original forms means that there are far fewer built-in plotting functions that designers and developers can rely upon, requiring an additional outlay of creativity and skill that, for example, recreating Playfair's charts does not require. But Du Bois's substantive focus on topics like income distribution and occupational spread also ensure that recreations of these charts with current data can lend evidence to enduring—and deeply unjust—social truths.

When data journalist and visualization designer Mona Chalabi decided to recreate Du Bois's charts using contemporary data, for example, she discovered that as of the 2010 U.S. Census, “illiteracy among black Americans was still four times higher than it was for white Americans.” Her updating of the chart of “assessed value of household and kitchen furniture” owned by Black Georgians, which led her to additional Census Bureau statistics on net worth, resulted in a picture that documented how, “for every dollar a black household in America has in net assets, a white household has 16.5 more.” Because Du Bois's representational forms have yet to be assimilated into mainstream visualization techniques, they still hold tremendous visual power, allowing them to bear witness through image—as well as data—to the racism and other forms of structural oppression that remain entrenched in US society today.

Illiteracy
Du Bois's chart of "Illiteracy" recreated with contemporary data by Mona Chalabi. Photo by Mona Chalabi. Image courtesy of Mona Chalabi. Permission pending.
Net Worth of Households
Du Bois's chart of household posessions recreated with contemporary data by Mona Chalabi. Photo by Mona Chalabi. Image courtesy of Mona Chalabi. Permission pending.

Other projects seek to adapt the activist intent of Du Bois's original charts to call attention to new issues that have arisen in the years since their creation, but that nonetheless still have racism at their source. For example, the Dignity + Debt Network and the VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization at Princeton created a series of interactive visualizations to expose the racial disparities in student loan debt in the United States in the style of Du Bois's charts. One tool enables users to enter the amount they originally borrowed, and see that amount compared to the average principle for each major racial and ethnic group. The tool makes use animation to extend and redirect the spiral's original comparative form. Whereas in the original chart, the spiral form concentrates the viewer's focus on the cumulative value of Black Georgians material possessions, the animated plotting of the data-lines here, spiraling out from the center over time, emphasizes the continuing effects of this debt burden. Crucially, it also invites the user to take action. A form below allows them to compare their current interest rate to others, educating them as to how a change in rate or monthly payment amount could lead to a different payoff date or total amount owed.

Screenshot of the Dignity + Debt student debt calculator
Screenshot of the Dignity + Debt student debt calculator Screenshot by Lauren Klein

At the same time, it is important to recognize that the existence of racial disparities in, for example, student loan debt, are not the fault of the students themselves, nor should they be the ones consistently tasked with providing more evidence as to its deleterious effects. This is a point made by another contemporary project that is based on Du Bois's charts, by the artist and educator Mimi Onuoha. “In Absentia” consists of six charts that reference the sequence and visual typologies of Du Bois's charts. But the point is not to provide additional evidence of what is already known to be true. Rather, in Onuoha's own words, “the prints form a meditation on interpretability, questioning why such a fact should need proving.” Onuoha's charts follow a similar progression to those in Du Bois's Georgia Negro series, in styles that recall if not directly replicate the typologies original charts. Maps in small multiples, similar to those that Du Bois employed to begin the series, document for example the spatial relation between the Indigenous lands that were claimed by the US government through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the locations in which “convict leasing” was practiced in the 1870s—this was the practice of prisons profiting from requiring those they imprisoned to work for private companies with no compensation for (or consent from) the imprisoned themselves—and the states with the highest incarceration rates as of 2019. But rather than continue to provide additional evidence of the unfolding legacy of slavery and dispossession, Onuoha employs Du Bois's more experimental forms to offer commentary on this continual need for evidence. A chart that resembles the spiraling bar-chart of the value of household possessions, discussed above, here consists of lines labeled “What,” “are we,” trying to prove.” A final chart is simply a circle, fully shaded, labeled “A space for truths that cannot be shown.” The chart is titled, “It Could Never Be Large Enough.”

This Land is Your Land
"This Land is Your Land," by Mimi Onuoha Photo by Emile Askey. Image courtesy of Mimi Onuoha. Permission pending
The Great Impossibility
"The Great Impossibility," by Mimi Onuoha Photo by Emile Askey. Image courtesy of Mimi Onuoha. Permission pending
It Could Never Be Large Enough
"It Could Never Be Large Enough," by Mimi Onuoha Photo by Emile Askey. Image courtesy of Mimi Onuoha. Permission pending

In the context of Du Bois's own writing about the relationship between data and “the truth,” Onuoha's use of this term speaks volumes. It reminds us as those who might seek to create new visualizations that bear witness to oppression, and as those who are eager to celebrate such images—which indeed attest to persistence of the same racism that, for example, enabled Du Bois's charts to be sent ahead to Paris while Du Bois himself was required to travel in steerage, as Battle-Baptist and Rusert document—that we often need no further evidence of many facts, including the foundation of racism that remains entrenched in American life. With this knowledge in mind, we might come to understand Du Bois's charts for how they illustrate another truth: how the arguments mounted through visualization, while often valuable, cannot be left to stand on their own. They must be accompanied by additional methods of knowledge-making, by broader context, and by a commitment to act.

As our project team considered how we might inhabit Du Bois’s revised approach to his research methods, and commit ourselves to pursue the greater knowledge that became his goal, we also knew that we could not claim to understand the full extent of the charge that Du Bois experienced upon hearing the news of Sam Hose’s murder. By the same token, we recognized that we could not uniformly, as a group, understand the effects of anti-Black racism first-hand. But there was an experience that we shared with Du Bois and his students: the fact that we, too, were a majority-student visualization team. And among the lessons that we had learned from our own process of creating the visualizations for this site is that each contributor to the project has their own story, one which helps to further contextualize the visualizations they helped to create—and, therefore, augments the insights that it prompts. We wondered if there might be additional context we might uncover if we brought our own range of methods and disciplinary expertise to bear on the student creators of the charts—and, in turn, what additional knowledge this context might help to prompt.

As have others, we noted the fact that the introductory chart of the second series of charts, the one with national focus, credited the charts' creation to “Negro students under the direction of Atlanta University.” We found it additionally intriguing that the visualization below the introductory text visualized data about Atlanta University students as well.

A series of statistical charts illustrating the condition of the descendants of former African slaves now in residence in the United States of America
A series of statistical charts illustrating the condition of the descendants of former African slaves now in residence in the United States of America Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-08994.

As have others, we noted the fact that the introductory chart of the second series of charts, the one with national focus, credited the charts’ creation to “Negro students under the direction of Atlanta University.”

We found it additionally intriguing that the visualization below the introductory text visualized data about Atlanta University students as well.

The pie chart at the center of the image gives visual form to the occupations of 330 graduates of Atlanta University, all those who had graduated from one of its three degree programs since its founding in 1867 through 1898, the year before the chart was made.

The slices of the pie correspond to four categories of occupation and professional field–teachers, ministers, government service, and business–as well as additional categories for “other professions” and “house wives”—that the graduates would go on to pursue.

While Du Bois does not disclose the source of his data on the chart, the number of graduates matches exactly with the number of alumni listed in the 1898-1899 Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Atlanta University, which Lauren had consulted in her background research. The total graduates and occupations for each type of degree—college, normal, and theological—are summarized in a data table at the end of the book.

In the pages before the table appears, the alumni are listed by degree, and then according to their year of graduation, alphabetically by name, along with their current occupation and place of residence.

Scanning the page which records the earliest graduates of Atlanta University provides fleeting glimpses into their lives. (1) William Henry Crogman, class of 1876, stayed in Atlanta to become a professor at Clark University. (2) Samuel Benjamin Morse moved to Savannah, 250 miles away on the Georgia coast, to become a music teacher. (3) London Humes Waters was deceased.

To bring these traces back into the chart itself, Tanvi first transcribed all of the names and associated information from the scanned version of the catalog into a spreadsheet.

Then, on the basis of Tanvi’s design, Anna and Nick recreated the original chart, placing the 255 alumni with known occupations in the appropriate section of the pie.

Hovering on each dot reveals the person’s name, occupation, and place of residence. Additional categories represent the 35 alumni with unknown occupations, and the 42 alumni who were recorded in the catalog as “Deceased.”

These are the actual people behind the data in the original pie chart, those whose education and accomplishments mattered so much to Du Bois that he devoted the majority of the space of the chart itself to testify to them, and to issue a call for additional funding that would ensure such opportunities for students ahead.

But these were not the same students who themselves created the charts. Their identities are more difficult to pinpoint with precision. An article from the May 1900 Atlanta University Bulletin describes how the work “was done entirely by Negroes--Dr. Du Bois and his assistants, most of whom are Atlanta University graduates.” Du Bois himself provides only a bit more detail, recalling in his third and final autobiographical text, written late in life, “I got a couple of my best students and put a series of facts into charts,” resulting in the “most interesting set of drawings” that were displayed in Paris. And while he goes on to describe the contents of the charts as well as how “the details of finishing these fifty or more charts, in colors, with accuracy, was terribly difficult with little money, limited time, and not too much encouragement,” he does not name any of the students who seemingly helped to ease this challenging task.

Newspaper reportage does name one former student, William Andrew Rogers, as responsible for having “executed” the charts, and the 1899-1900 Catalogue of the Officers and Students confirms this role, listing Rogers's occupation as “Work on Paris Exhibit.” (Rogers had graduated the previous year.) But “based on the volume of the designs, each piece's complexity and detail, and the compressed project timeline,” as Silas Munro confirms, “it seems implausible that Rogers and Du Bois worked alone to complete the project.” The fact that the first set of charts are more sophisticated in their visual design, and more professional in their execution, suggests that Rogers and Du Bois might have worked on the first series together, while enlisting other students in the design and execution of the second set of charts.

If this were true, it would not have been the first time that Du Bois enlisted his own students in a collaborative research project. Among the defining intellectual contributions of the early years of Atlanta University were the Atlanta University Studies, annual data-driven reports on specific areas of Black life that were presented each spring at a large public conference. In fact, Du Bois was recruited to the university in large part to assume direction of the studies, which had begun only two years before his arrival. To complete this work, Du Bois drew from “two tiers of volunteer researchers,” as sociologist Aldon Morris explains: recent graduates of HBCUs across the nation, and his own graduate and undergraduate students. Their work together became the basis for what Morris names the Du Bois-Atlanta School of Sociology, the first “scientific,” or data-driven, sociology program in the United States.

Among the innovations of the Du Bois-Atlanta school was its required coursework. Long before any elite university offered training in data collection or analysis methods, Du Bois instructed his students in a full year of such methods, culminating in a term of applied research on “the social and economic conditions of the American Negro” during their senior year. While there is minimal evidence as to the specific research tasks these students performed, it is generally acknowledged that this coursework was the mechanism by which Du Bois prepared his students for the roles they would play after graduation as unofficial field sites for the data collection required to continue to produce the annual reports.

Several of the charts displayed in the Paris Exposition make use of the data that was collected for the study, The College-Bred Negro, that would be published later that year. The data on the Atlanta University graduates that is visualized in the opening chart, for example, is the same that appears in the published report. Thus while the specific contributions of individual students remain lost to time, we can look up the names of the students who were enrolled in Du Bois's sociology course that year in the corresponding Catalogue. There were four: Henry Napoleon Lee, Lula Iola Mack, Edward Lee Simon, and William George Westmoreland. A slightly revised version of the chart above includes these names, positioned outside of the pie itself, closest to the occupation that—according to their own alumni records—they would soon take on.

But the role of these students in Du Bois's sociological project—and is pedagogical legacy—was not limited to their assistance with collection and analysis of the data that appeared on the charts, or whatever their role in visualizing that data might have been. In the 1909-1910 academic year, Du Bois and a new team of students undertook a follow-up study to the College-Bred Negro, based on a survey of 3856 Black college graduates across the country. Among the responses were 163 graduates of the “college course” of Atlanta University-including the five students who contributed to the making of the original chart. A decade on, their lives had become data that further testified to the enduring value of Du Bois's pedagogical aims.

In this expanded chart that visualizes the data from the 1910 Atlanta University Study, the colorful map that informs the viewer of the location of Atlanta University has been expanded to include the locations of the 140 additional colleges also included in the study.

As in the original, the location of Atlanta University is marked with a star.

In this pie chart, the 133 graduates of Atlanta University as of 1909 with known occupations (as determined by the alumni section of the 1909-1910 catalog) are positioned in the appropriate area of the pie chart. Additional categories represent the nine graduates with unknown occupations, and the 21 graduates who were recorded as “Deceased.”

An additional 3693 gray dots represent the graduates of the other 140 colleges included in the study whose names were not recorded as data. They are placed in the appropriate area as determined by the summary statistics of occupations included in the study. These dots hold space for these students’ contributions to the study, even if we do not know their names.

Here we can see the five students who contributed to the original charts, now placed in the area corresponding to the profession they held in 1909. Lula Iola Mack became a housewife, married to a Mr. F.H. Wilkins, and was living in the city of Athens, Georgia. Edward Lee Simon became a supervisor of industrial work in the Memphis Public Schools. William George Westmoreland stayed in Atlanta, working as a mail carrier. Henry Napoleon Lee, three years earlier, in 1907, was deceased.

There is little more that we can learn about Lee's abbreviated life from the extant data. The catalogs of the years after the Paris Exposition show that, evidently, Lee moved to Memphis with Edward Lee Simon immediately upon graduation. While Simon became the superintendent of the printing department at LeMoyne Institute, Lee worked as a teacher in the industrial department of the same school. The next year, he moved to Denver, then to Hot Springs, Arkansas, then back to Atlanta. In 1905, he was working in Macon, Georgia, as a teacher at the Ballard Normal School, along with several other alumni of Atlanta University who had found employment there. According to the catalog, Lee lived and worked in Macon until he passed away.

There are many questions we might think to ask about Lee and his abbreviated life—about his reasons for traveling the country, about his experiences in those far-flung locals, and his relationships with the other Atlanta University alumni who welcomed him as a colleague when he returned to his home state. But the answers to these questions are not found in the extant data. This truth, to return to Onuoha's formulation, is likely not recorded as data at all.

Yet there are other truths we might gesture towards with our visualization work. In addition to the quantitative data presented in the 1910 Atlanta University Study, there was also data that was qualitative in form.

A CHART ILLUSTRATING THE WORDS OF THE BLACK COLLEGE GRADUATES FROMACROSS THE UNITED STATES WHO CONTRIBUTED TO DU BOIS'S RESEARCH.PREPARED AND EXECUTED BYTANVI SHARMA, ANNA MOLA, JayVarner, AND LAUREN KLEIN UNDERTHE AUSPICES OF THE Digital HUMANITIES LAB Emory University,ATLANTA, GA UNITED STATES OF AMERICATHE PREVIOUS CHART VISUALIZED INFORMATION ABOUT THE GRADUATES OFATLANTA UNIVERSITY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF BLACKCOLLEGE GRADUATES IN THE UNITED STATES AS OF 1909.AS PART OF THE COLLEGE-BRED NEGRO AMERICAN, THESE SAME COLLEGE GraduatesWERE SURVEYED ABOUT THEIR LIVES. THIS CHART VISUALIZES THEIR WORDS.This visualization enriches the data associated with the 3,856 Black collegegraduates who were documented in The College-Bred Negro American.As part of the study, they were also asked to provide written responses tofour questions: their thoughts on their own "early life and training," theirplans to educate their children, the "chief hindrances" they had faced, andtheir "present practical philosophy in regard to the Negro race in America,"abbreviated in the study as "philosophy of life." About 800 responsesto the survey were received, a selection of which were published.Reports of early lifeand trainingHow shall you educate yourchildren(i.e., to a trade in,college, in a profession, etc.)Briefly, what is your present practicalphilosophy in regard to the negro racein America?What have been your chiefhinderances?(i.e., how has prejudice or,lack of opportunity worked)in your case?)Read fullresponseI was carefully reared by parents who hadbeen slaves, attended public schools,removed to Ohio and attended high school.Read fullresponseI was born and reared on a cotton farm. Myearly training was such as could be receivedin an ex-slave home and three-months-in-theyear school. Mother and father werehonest tho unlettered and strove to makethe best of their opportunities and leftthat impression upon their children. Bestof all, I was reared in a Christian home.Read fullresponseI went from Virginia to Vermont December 23,1863. I worked on the farm nine months during theyear and attended common school three months.I did this till 1872. I then went to Andover,Massachusetts, March 7, 1872. AttendedPhillips Andover Academy from 1872 to 1875;then to Middlebury College, Vermont, 1875 to1880; Boston University, 1880 to 1883.Read fullresponseMy early life was spent on the farm. Myearly training was two months of public schooleach year and studying at night by lightwoodknots. I went from this to the gradedschool of Wilson, North Carolina, and fromthere to Lincoln University, Pennsylvania.Read fullresponseI was born of poor, hard-working parents and wasleft an orphan at eleven years. I went to nightschool in the town where I was being reared by afamily of white people who were the ex-owners ofmy parents. I entered school as a day studentat age of seventeen, completed the academiccourse at twenty and then went to college.Read fullresponseBeing born a slave, my early training wasquite meagre until I was eleven or twelveyears old, having simply learned to readand spell well up to my twelfth year. Myliterary training was obtained in Tennessee,to which I was brought in very early life.Read fullresponseMy early life was one of povertyand longing for better things.Read fullresponseI was born on a farm and remained there untilI was well up in age. I have chopped cotton,worked corn, pulled hay, because I had no scytheto cut it, peddled wood at the Fayetteville,North Carolina, market many a winter with noshoes on and clothing extremely scarce. . . . Mylife was one of struggle from the time I couldremember but in the future I saw a star of hopeand pushed in that direction every time I sawan opportunity to advance. I went to a countryschool in a log house in Cumberland county,North Carolina. I went to Wilmington to live andthere went to night school four or five months.Read fullresponseMy father deserted home when I was about fiveyears old. My mother died when I was twelveyears old, leaving me in the care of anilliterate foster mother. She was very kindto me and did laundry work that I might beallowed to attend school. I finished thepublic school course in 1895. In the summer of1896 I went to Rhode Island to work. From thattime until I finished school in 1905 1 paid myown expenses by doing hotel work in summer.Read fullresponseI was born a slave. I learned thealphabet in 1868 near Nashville, Tennessee,and graduated from college in 1878.Read fullresponseEarly life on a plantation amid surroundingsincident to slave life. Attended publicschool more or less irregularly.Read fullresponseI was a slave until eleven yearsof age. I learned the bricklayer'strade. I entered college in l875.Read fullresponseI was born in the country, worked on farmtill eighteen years old, then worked forrailroad three years. I went to schoolabout four months before I was twenty.Read fullresponseI passed my early life on the farm near the townof Franklinton, North Carolina, and was trainedin the Christian Institute and Albion Academy.I never had the support of a father but wasobedient to the direction of a loving mother towhom I owe all I am and all I hope to be.Read fullresponseI worked on a farm and attendedrural schools until I was sixteen andthen entered Fisk University.Read fullresponseI was born a slave and was freed by theEmancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.Read fullresponseI went to a private school when quite young. Myfather and mother died when I was nine years old.I lived then with white people, working for myboard and clothes several years. While thereI lacked one year of completing the high schoolcourse. I went from there to Lincoln Instituteand completed the two years' Normal course. FromLincoln Institute I went to Fisk Universityand completed the bachelor of arts course.Read fullresponseI was born on a sugar plantation; spentearly life as a farmer. I had someadvantages of public school instruction.Read fullresponseI assisted my father on the farm and in his winterwork as the town butcher during school vacationsin the summer and on Saturdays. I attended thepublic schools of Macon, Mississippi, duringtheir sessions of nine months. I was taughtfirst by those whites who came from the Northas teachers during the seventies; then by Fiskand Rust University graduates until I came toFisk in 1887. I pushed my own way forwardmostly, i. e. with the occasional lift my fatherwould give when I called upon him, which Ireluctantly did as he evidently had succeededsome in his teaching of self-reliance-notrunning up the white flag upon every occasion.Read fullresponseI was born on my father's farm in thetraditional log cabin. Early trainingwas received in the country public school.Read fullresponseMy childhood and youth were spent in Atlanta.Most of my time I was working to help supportmy family. Now and then I went to night schooland the summer country school. In 1876 1got desperate and broke away from my familyand entered Storr's School. Finishingthere in the spring of 1877, in the fall ofthe same year I entered Atlanta University andthere I remained till I was graduated in 1884.Read fullresponseI was eighteen months old, the youngest of sixchildren, when my Father died. My mother wasleft with a home and six children too young towork. Having nothing left me and with brothersand sisters to be supported by my mother, myearly life was one of denial. I had the necessarythings of life-nothing else. When I became oldenough to work I secured a route on an afternoonpaper and sold papers Sunday mornings. I didthis all the time I was attending school in thiscity, making from one and a half to three and ahalf dollars per week. My people were free,able to read and write, and with a knowledgeof refinement above the average, thereforemy home surroundings were above the average.I had a good training along religious lines.Read fullresponseDuring vacations and holidays Iworked in the shop with my father whowas a wheelwright and wagon and carriagebuilder. I worked some with an uncle onthe farm when work in the shop was slack.Read fullresponseI was born in slavery and came into freedomunder the terms of Lincoln's EmancipationProclamation. While a slave I did various kindsof light work for my master's family or forother white people to whom I was often hired.From 1865 to 1867 I tried to help my mothersupport her large family of children. From1867 to 1880 I was in school in Atlanta,Georgia, and Andover, Massachusetts.Read fullresponseBeginning at the age of six I attended the countrydistrict school, terms averaging about two andone-half months per year. I worked on farmwith my father until I was fifteen; then a fewmonths on the railroad; but my chief work upto the age of twenty-one was in tobacco factories.Read fullresponseI worked at any and all kinds of common work,such as waiting table and barber shop porter,attending the common schools and also takingadvantage of such private schools as were offered.Read fullresponseI was sixteen when the war closed. I learnedto read and write in night school in Albany,Georgia, in 1866. I plowed all day andwalked a mile and a half at night to school.Read fullresponseI was born a slave on a farm in Franklincounty, Virginia. When I was eight yearsold I walked with my parents to Kanawhacounty, West Virginia, a distance of twohundred and fifty miles, in the month ofMarch. My father died when I was twelve. Inever attended school until after that time.Read fullresponseI was a slave until I reached the age ofthirteen years. I was taken from my parentsat ten years of age. I have been compelled tosupport myself since 1865. I had about ninemonths of schooling before reaching the age oftwenty-one years. I have received most of myeducation since I became twenty-one years of age.Read fullresponseI was born and reared on a farm, attended thecountry schools during my boyhood days. I havedone all kinds of laboring work, both on thefarm and on the railroad. I acted as a clerkin a supply department at a summer resort foreighteen years during summer vacations whilea student and since I have been teaching.Read fullresponseI was brought up on a farm with no chance toeducate myself. I had to work for what I couldeat and wear, having no one to help me in life.Father was dead; mother could not help mebecause she was not able. I had no chance togo to school until I was nineteen years old.Read fullresponseI jobbed around in summer and attended winterschool, maintained by my parents; taught generallyby students from Oberlin College. I was hired outas house-boy for a while; carried clothes backand forth as my mother took in washing. I wasnaturally studious. I studied Latin and Algebramyself. I went to Louisville, Kentucky, beforethe war and assisted my brother-in-law in teachingfree Negro children and slaves who could get apermit. From there I went to Ohio University,Athens, Ohio, in 1849 and graduated there in 1853.Read fullresponseI was educated largely by my ownefforts, being left an orphan in thestate of Vermont after 1865.Read fullresponseMy mother died when I was six months old,father when I was seven years old. Between thecity and country I lived, survived and did notperish. At the age of nineteen I was janitorof graded school in Durham, North Carolina. Ireceived ten dollars per month and my schooling.At the end of the school term I passedthe fourth grade, the proudest boy in theworld. I clerked in store that summer andin the fall I entered Fisk with a vim to win.Read fullresponseI was born a slave. I was bound out for fouryears. I was taught at nights by the daughtersof the man to whom I was apprenticed forfour years. Lived and worked on farm mostof the time till nineteen years of age.Read fullresponseI was born a slave and left an orphan. I was sentadrift empty hand without parents or guardian.I began education in night school. I enteredday school under Quakers at age of seventeen.I attended two months during session forfour years. Meanwhile I continued to burn themidnight oil. I became clerk, bookkeeper,deputy sheriff, policeman, public school teacher.Read fullresponseI attended public schools of Augusta,Georgia, and worked between times as anewspaper carrier and later on as a printer.I was graduated from Ware High School in1886 and then entered Atlanta University.Read fullresponseI grew up on a farm with a 'scrappedup' education in fitful public and privateschools and private instruction.Read fullresponseMy early life and training was that of theordinary youth of our race: one of a largefamily of children, on a little farm, afew months' attendance every year at publicschools until large enough to work. At theage of twenty I left for the North and byhard work by day and private study by nightI prepared to enter Lincoln University.Read fullresponseI was born a slave and was a farmboy until twenty-four years old.Read fullresponseI was born in the country in Missouri. Up tonine years of age I had no schooling. Ilearned my A, B, C's from the Bible in my tenthyear. I had two terms of school, one threemonths, one five months in Missouri. My familyemigrated to Nebraska when I was in my twelfthyear. Farmed there and finished common and highschool at Seward, Seward county, Nebraska.Read fullresponseI was a farm boy until twenty-fouryears of age. I was born a slave.Read fullresponseSea life for eight or ten years. I traveledmuch. I attended district school inMassachusetts in winter. My academic trainingwas received at Pierce Academy, Middleboro,Massachusetts; college work at Atlanta University.Read fullresponseI attended public school in a rural districtuntil sixteen years old. I then went to asmall town and entered graded school. Imade a good average with attendance daily thefirst term and was promoted. The next term Ibecame tutor. My parents being dead myteachers became interested in me and made itpossible for me to enter college in 1893.Read fullresponseI was reared on the farm until old enoughto earn wages; then I was hired out untilabout twenty years old, when I entered schoolfor the first time. Steady work andinterested parties put me thru school.Read fullresponseI was reared on a farm. My parents were pooryet they kept me supplied with books and saw to itthat I attended our rural school regularly. Atthe age of fourteen I entered Tougaloo University.Read fullresponseI was reared on a large farm owned by my father,who was one of the most extensive cotton plantersin Ouachita Parish. My parents were not educatedbut both could read and write; and knowing theadvantage of an education they spent a fortunein educating their children, giving thirteen-allwho did not die in early childhood-a fair Englishtraining. When I was nine years of agethey employed a tutor in the home to prepareme to be sent off to school, since educationaladvantages for Negroes were so poor in that partof the state. The next year I entered Straight.Read fullresponseI was born in a cabin andattended a country school.Read fullresponseThe child of a college-bred mother and fairlyintelligent father, my home life and earlytraining were good; I had every opportunityand encouragement to acquire an education.Read fullresponseI had a good home and intelligent parents,who were free people before the war, hence Ienjoyed some educational advantages beforethe Civil War. My father was a barber and alawyer, the first colored man admitted to thebar in Tennessee. My mother was a skilleddressmaker who served for Mrs. PresidentPolk and others high in social life.Read fullresponseI attended the public school of Oberlin,Ohio, for two years. We moved Southin 1883. From then I was taught in thehome until I went off to school in 1890.Read fullresponseI was a pupil in the public school of Gainesville,Florida, until about sixteen years of age. Then Ientered the State Normal School at Tallahassee,Florida, from which I graduated in 1902. Whilea student at Tallahassee I taught each summerin rural schools. During each school year Iearned my board entirely by services renderedin the president's family. After graduatingI taught two consecutive terms in city schoolsand in 1904 spent the summer studying at theUniversity of Chicago. In the fall of 1904 1returned South and entered Clark University.Read fullresponseI was educated in Iowa. I earnedmy way thru the University.Read fullresponseMy father was a man of fair education;mother not formally educated but a great readerfrom her youth up. Both were activelyinterested in the education of their children.Read fullresponseIt is my present intention to give my boysa full university training in order that theymay be equipped to take high rank inwhatever calling or profession they may choose.Read fullresponseI believe in educating the childto make the best citizen; a collegeeducation to those who will take it.Read fullresponseIn obedience to their inclinations and gifts andwithout prejudice for or against any particulartraining. Technical, agricultural, mercantile,professional training are of equal importanceif preparation and research are sufficient,there being urgent need for real high gradeleadership in every avenue for the Negro. Ifthen any offspring from my household manifestspecial taste for and high merit in any worthyline, I shall only ask God to enable me toassist them to the highest in that line.Read fullresponseFirst public school, secondly college, thirduniversity, then if possible provide forher to study abroad. I shall teach theimportance of attainment of the highestpossible type of culture and refinementand the importance of possessing somethingthat people who have money want.Read fullresponseI have but one daughter. I plan togive her a college education in southern,eastern and European institutions.Read fullresponseI am striving to be in shape to give mychildren a thoro, practical education whichwill best fit them for the daily pursuits of life.Read fullresponseI shall endeavor to give thattraining which in my judgment willbe of the highest good to him.Read fullresponseI want my daughter to make musicher specialty but will allow herto choose her literary course.Read fullresponseEach is to receive at least a normal and academiceducation. Two or three may take the universitycourse, one in music, one in theology.Read fullresponseIt is my intention to give them the verybest education that they can assimilate.Read fullresponseI desire to have them brought up at a schoolsuch as Fisk after they have reached pubertyand later at a northern university. But firstof all I shall teach them the fundamentalsof politeness, hygiene, and the art of doingwork assigned them smoothly and with polish.Read fullresponseThe education of my children will probablydepend largely upon their own wishesbut I should like them to receive trainingequivalent to the four years' college course atAtlanta University and professional or specialtraining for some particular line of work.Read fullresponseIf I should be so fortunate as to have anychildren I would send them to Phillips Exeter,Harvard and Lawrence Scientific School.Read fullresponseSome in trade, some in college and some in aprofession. One is already a dressmaker,another is a trained nurse and still anotherhas finished in theology and is doing goodpastoral work at Albany, Georgia.Read fullresponseI expect to send my boys thru college andmy daughter thru a normal training school.Read fullresponseI propose to give them as completean education as they can receive.Read fullresponseAs their talent seems to indicate. The bestis none too good. Broadly as men and asAmerican citizens and not narrowly as Negroes.Read fullresponseI don’t know as to a trade or aprofession but most certainly I shallgive my boy a college education and mydaughter a good normal training.Read fullresponseCollege and technical as far as myinfluence can bring this about; ultimately,of course, the child must decide.Read fullresponseThis would depend largely upon the naturaltendency of the children but my desire wouldbe for them to have a college education and,if passible, for the boys to take a professionafterwards. Both boys and girls should work atsome trade during vacation seasons while in publicschool as I believe no boy or girl should bepermitted to grow up without leaning how to dosome kind of work proficiently with the hands.Read fullresponseI favor college education because thenthey are better prepared to succeed; then tohis trade or profession well equipped.Read fullresponseI shall give them a higher Christianliterary education as a foundation andallow them afterwards to study anytrade or profession they may wish.Read fullresponseI shall educate my girlsto be school teachers.Read fullresponseI am giving my son academic and professionaland my daughter academic and trade.Read fullresponseIn the way that shall best fit them asindividuals to be of greatest service tothemselves and to others. I desirethem to have a three-fold education.Read fullresponseTrain their early years in some form ofhandicraft or trade; give them a collegecourse in an institution for Negroes;and the boys a professional course in one ofthe best schools without regard to color.Read fullresponseI will try to educate my children accordingto their inclinations. I am notpartial; to any kind of education whichfits men and women for true service.Read fullresponseFor profession if they show inclinationand ability sufficient to indicate thatthey will be successful in such work.For trades or business if they show specialadaptability for that class of work.Read fullresponseI would give him a broad and comprehensivecollege training and leave it to his owninclination as to trade or profession.Read fullresponseI shall endeavor to study the aptitude ofthe child. If he or she is best fittedfor an industrial life or a profession Idesire to root that industry or professioninto a fertile, college-trained brain.Read fullresponseBoys to a trade or a profession,according to their respective inclinationsand apparent adaptability. Girlsin college and domestic science.Read fullresponseSome trade along with their preparatorytraining. College course, a part of whichshall be in some Christian institution.Their professional training shall be theoutgrowth of their natural adaptation togetherwith the aid and direction of parents.Read fullresponseIntend to make teachers of some of them.The boys wish to be scientific farmers.Read fullresponseIn college and in the ministry with someindustrial training, with the hope thathe may become a missionary to Africa.Read fullresponseIntend to make a dentist of myboy and a musician of my girl.Read fullresponseHope to have them learn trade, gothru one of the northern collegesand learn some profession.Read fullresponseBoy, to trade or medicine; girl,to domestic science and music.Read fullresponseI am striving to give my children a thoropractical education which will best fitthem for the daily pursuits of life.Read fullresponsePrejudice has all along hindered mein getting what I have merited. Onthe other hand, it has been a negativegood, doing for me what some measure whata rough sea does for a mariner: bringingout whatever of good stuff there is in me.Read fullresponseMy chief hindrance has been a lack of funds.I have always had to hustle for what I haveattained and having become accustomed to it Ihardly consider that a hindrance now. I havefound a certain amount of prejudice everywhereI have been but I have also found that ambitionand energy with integrity can override prejudice.Read fullresponseI have no reason to complain. While opportunitiesfor the young Negro are fewer than for the youngwhite man in this country, the young men ofour race are neglecting opportunities which wouldseem golden to the young men of other lands.Read fullresponseI find that a desire to work, whenbased on a good foundation, educationaland moral, is appreciated andencouraged by all classes of people.Read fullresponseMy chief hindrance has been a lack of capitalwith which to carry out my plans. Prejudicecuts very little figure in the business worldif you have what the white man wants or if hecan use you in any way. He will look you up.Read fullresponseI think sometimes people of our own race whoare in position to do so throw obstaclesin your way of progress. I think to acertain extent I have been such a victim.Read fullresponseIn getting into close, vital relation withmy people in order to be of real service.Read fullresponseI could say poverty; but it has been the spurthat made me move when I would have fallen by thewayside. Prejudice and lack of opportunity:I cannot be harsh on either. Where prejudiceexisted I strove to soften by acquaintanceand have never failed. Opportunity: so far Ihave always been able to be ready when it madeits appearance to step in and get my share.Read fullresponsePoor salary. Prejudice onaccount of progress and satisfactoryconditions of my surroundings.Read fullresponsePrejudice has militated againstincrease of salary in service of city.Read fullresponsePrejudice has been a great hindrance butnot any more so than is usual with coloredpeople. My greatest hindrance has beenlack of opportunity as I have had to meetheavy obligations since leaving school.Read fullresponseLack of opportunity thru prejudice both amongthe more ignorant of my race as well as amongthe white people has been a great hindrance tomy advancement. I have never been able toreceive pay adequate to my qualifications.Read fullresponseSouthern prejudice has helpedrather than hindered me.Read fullresponsePrejudice has been a great hindrance. Thethings which would tend to advancementfor white men have been overlookedin my case on account of color.Read fullresponseThe same every colored man meets. Menialpositions; poor pay as a teacher; fidelityto my race, which led me to decline a highposition on a railroad in Georgia which Icould have had by passing for white. Icould get only about two-thirds the salarypaid to a white teacher of the same grade.Read fullresponseWhile I have no great complaint to make, Ithink perhaps my life would have been larger andfar different but for my color, tho the factthat I was elected to public office in a whitecommunity shows that I have escaped much of therace prejudice with which the race has to contend.Read fullresponseThe lack of money has been one of the drawbacksin my case. I never allowed prejudice toworry me. I always attended to my ownbusiness and let other people do the same.Read fullresponseMy opportunities have been very good.I have often been able to crossthe bounds set by prejudice.Read fullresponseI have not had access to hospital andclinical facilities to keep up and perfectmyself in my professional work.Read fullresponsePrejudice has hindered me frombecoming head physician here. Iam eldest in point of location here.Read fullresponseI have never allowed prejudice to crush me.With me it has been more of a stimulus.It is an awful fact and works with amaliciousness that is willful and premeditatedbut it is wanting in substance; itis not founded on the rock of reason andtruth. It is unthinking and blind and will,therefore, ultimately work its own destruction.Read fullresponseChief hindrance perhaps is my desire to alwaysdraw salary rather than take chance in business.Prejudice has made me less prominent as anengineer, kept from me good paying positionsand forced me to accept less pay for thesame work. All of my classmates who arewhite are drawing larger salaries than I.Read fullresponseDoing same or more work for less moneythan my white comrades. No incentiveto be anything better than what I am.Difficulty in obtaining promotion overwhite competitors or even along with them.Read fullresponsePrejudice among colored people againsttheir own college men is a hindrance.Read fullresponseI have gone steadily on and have donewhatever has been my duty so far as I havebeen able to see my duty. I have notbeen directly hindered in my work, henceprejudice has hindered me in a general wayin proportion as it has impeded my race.Read fullresponseI have succeeded fairly well in my profession buthave been prevented from reaching that prominencein it which I might have otherwise reached bythe awful race prejudice that exists here aselsewhere. Then the colored lawyer does not havethe stimulus to exertion the white lawyer hasbecause he knows the honors and emoluments ofthe profession are denied him because of hisrace. No matter what his excellence or fitnesshe can never reach the bench or have retainersfrom large corporations. The truth is thatthe colored lawyer to succeed at all mustbe far beyond the average white lawyer.Read fullresponsePrejudice circumscribed the sphereof activities for broader cultureand for increased efficiency.Read fullresponseRace prejudice has undoubtedly lessened myopportunities but on the other hand has servedindirectly to make me use such opportunitiesas I have had to a better advantage thanI would otherwise have done possibly.Read fullresponseLack of means to procure needed facilities tocarry out and plan my line of work for myselfand for my pupils. A desire on the part ofschool boards to restrict us in our efforts tosecure a sufficient number of, and capable,efficient teachers, well equipped laboratories andlibraries. I taught physics and chemistry ina laboratory in --- furnished by ourselves.Read fullresponseIn some places silent opposition to Negro collegegraduates on the part of white and colored.Read fullresponsePrejudice is always present but I have foundfar more opportunity than prejudice, i. e.prejudice that hindered in any vital sense.The greatest hindrance is the indifferenceof my own people to the necessity for unityand increased, well-directed activity.Prejudice has made me work harder and so hasproved many times a blessing in disguise.Read fullresponseIt is my belief that prejudice isa spur to serious endeavor on thepart of intelligent colored men.Read fullresponsePrejudice and proscription have operatedto my disadvantage to the extent ofcooling ardor and chilling aspiration.Read fullresponsePrejudice and lack of opportunity haveretarded my progress but by industry,economy, conservatism and perseveranceI have in a measure overcome them.Read fullresponsePrejudice against the highereducation of Negroes.Read fullresponsePrejudice denies us the privilege ofenjoying the confidence and association ofmany superior minds. It has denied me theopportunity to enjoy or be benefited by thelarge number of programs and meetings of apublic or semi-public nature where a great dealof information and inspiration may be obtained.Read fullresponseMy chief hindrance has been lack ofopportunity. There is not enough businessamong colored people to employ their youngmen and women when they finish school.Read fullresponseIt is hard to specify the ways in whichprejudice has worked against one. No manwho has been hampered by or has been compelledto contend against prejudice has been ableto reach his best and biggest self.Read fullresponsePrejudice has been from the very beginningthe chief hindrance in my life. I have beenturned from printing establishments because ofobjection to my color. I have been engagedfor clerical work and then discharged whenmy color became known. It has operatedagainst me in oratorical contests at college.Read fullresponseI cannot complain of lack of opportunity.I find the old adage holds true: Wherethere is a will there is a way.Read fullresponsePrejudice has been no barrierwhen it came to acquiring property,but if often crushes my spirit.Read fullresponseIn my estimation my chief hindrance has been thatI have never had all the equipment which I feltshould be mine to make the greatest possiblesuccess in the tasks which have been mine. Thomeasurably successful in all my career I haveso often felt the need of more mastery over theimmediate problems of business. Prejudice has hadto do with my life and experience as with others.Promotions which would have been given freelyand early to a man of another racial identity, Ihave had to labor long for. Yet in all fairnessI must say that whereas prejudice, damnable andlow, is continually operating against me, yet Ihave won so far. I have got what I went after,after a fight nevertheless, yet got it.Read fullresponseI cannot buy or rent respectable propertywithout the greatest embarrassment andsometimes not even then. This givesa set-back to my dignity and influence.Read fullresponsePrejudice has closed several doors ofopportunity along the line of educationaladvantages; was responsible for alow wage some years; and caused muchembarrassment in ways whose name is legion.Read fullresponseMy chief hindrance has been the treacheryand vanity of the namby-pamby Negro. To putit another way my chief hindrance hasbeen my inability to play the hypocrite.Read fullresponsePrejudice is the chief hindrance in theway of all college-bred Negro men who wantto make the most of life. Prejudice, Ithink, has made me suspicious of all whitepeople, sometimes with injustice to them,I fear, and with injury to myself.Read fullresponseMy chief hindrance is that I am deprived ofthe enjoyment of my rights as a free citizen.Read fullresponseI feel that only half the measure of thepossibilities of my career has been filledbecause prejudice has been a handicap to the fulland free prosecution of my professional labors.Most of the Negros believe that to succeed inour efforts they must have a white advocate.Read fullresponseThere is in this community a kindlygrowing sentiment on the part of the whitestoward colored people and so prejudice doesnot interrupt much. My chief hindranceis due to the fact that it is difficult toget my own people to appreciate in a largeway our opportunities for growth and power.Read fullresponseLack of confidence among our people to intrusttheir business with one another and to dobusiness with each other generally. I mightterm it ‘race pride.’ I think it is due more toabsolute ignorance. However, we are coming toa better understanding of each other and businessconfidence in each other is being developedboth on account of oppression and prejudice andthe preaching of self-help among ourselves.Read fullresponsePrejudice and lack of opportunity have been atonce my handicap and my constant stimulant.Daily experience with them has kept me keyedup to constant exertion and the doing ofmy best. Expecting no quarter it hasbeen with me a fight to the finish and apoint of manhood and honor to succeed.Read fullresponseLack of proper aspiration among themasses. Failure of the people - toappreciate real ability. Jealousyand prejudice among certain leaders.Read fullresponseMy greatest hindrance was lack of publicschool opportunity early in life. Alot of good time was lost in those days.Read fullresponsePrejudice hinders a man all the timeand everywhere in doing a man's work.No man can do his best whilehampered by senseless prejudice.Read fullresponsePrejudice of ignorant blacks as well aswhites does a great deal to hinder. Theuneducated black is very jealous of his educatedbrother and will do lots to hinder his progress.Read fullresponseIn my work I have felt perhaps more thananything else the prohibition from public libraryfacilities in such a city as Atlanta.Read fullresponsePrejudice has played so small a part that it canbe considered a negligible quantity. Perhaps Ihave not followed the paths in which one wouldmeet it so keenly. My chief hindrance haspossibly come from within: the ignorance of thebig opportunities that await the average youngNegro man of education and energy in thebusiness world provided he works eternally.Read fullresponseA very limited field to choose positions from,as compared to many of my white fellow studentswhose academic standing was below mine. Socialconditions in my home state shut me out of thecareer I would have naturally sought there.Read fullresponsePrejudice has made me fight the harder to overcomethe disabilities of caste. It has kept mealive and made me yearn to accomplish something,nerved me to live and endure sufferingand sorrow of any kind in order to see theultimate triumph of righteous civic ideals.Read fullresponseRather difficult to answer as I have workedall the while under conditions that I sawlittle hope of changing hence gave littlethot to what I might have done under differentconditions. I feel sure the lack of opportunityfor full exercise of ability in certain lineshas, perhaps in some cases unconsciously,served to stifle ambition and prevent activitythat might have been useful to communities inwhich I have lived. In some instances I thinkprejudice has nerved me to more persistent effort.Read fullresponseThe color line has prevented a chancefor scientific and literary work.Read fullresponseRace prejudice prevents me being retained ascounsel where otherwise I would be employed.It keeps away the most remunerative class ofbusiness. It compels me to accept a smaller feefor work done and services rendered than wouldotherwise be the case. It often causes me tocontest in court for fees after they have beenearned, when but for the ‘previous condition ofservitude’ of my ancestors said fees would becheerfully paid. No one is able to estimatethe damage inflicted upon him by the forceswhich make for ostracism and which impose aperennial and continued boycott because of race.Read fullresponse1. Prejudice which debars me from work ininstitutions for which my training fits me. 2.Superficially trained Negroes who, like thedog in the manger, have ever tried to hindermy progress. 3. The false notion that theNegro scholar does not deserve as much pay forintellectual work as a white man does forthe same work. 4. Poor salary which has made itnecessary for me to abandon many of my researchesat an early stage. Indeed what little I haveaccomplished has been at the expense of thecomforts and often of the necessities of life.Read fullresponseThe hope of the Negro is a Christianeducation of heart, head and hand.Read fullresponseIn my opinion the Negro needs nothing so much asto be let alone. He wants not special attentioneither in the legislative hall or out. Hewants to be treated and regarded as an Americancitizen in fact. He asks for no more thanhe merits but he wants all he does merit. Toreach this point he must contend for all theterm implies. Life is a battle and every manmust be a fighter. Playing the baby-act will notaccomplish anything. Brave men will not onlysuffer hardships in maintaining their rightsbut will face dangers. Long since I came to theconclusion that right living on our part would notalone solve the problem. It is not the worthless,ignorant spendthrift among us that arouses thewhite man’s opposition, repression, oppression,and prejudice. That class knows ‘his place.’Read fullresponseI have an abiding hope for the future of the race.But great suffering and loss are in store for therace thru error. There is an attempt in a largepart of the country to establish a caste systemof education for the Negro. . . . . In thestate institutions they are taking out the higherstudies and promoting mediocre men and women,paying them in proportion much larger salariesthan they are paying college-bred Negro teachers.Read fullresponseI firmly believe that the destiny of theAmerican Negro lies largely in his own hands.I have never yet seen a self-respecting, honestand industrious Negro, educated or uneducated,who did not have the respect and good-will ofthe better class of whites with whom he comes incontact. . . . I believe that we as individualsmust take as our weapons honesty, industryand economy and wage a war against prejudice.Read fullresponseThe Negro race in America is fortunate. Thecountry is still far from being developed orcrowded. Tho race prejudice is rampantit is still too weak to suppress any classwhich has the determination to rise. Thereis still plenty of room. Less complaintand more effort will pull us up with thedominant class. We should seek and developall the thinly settled parts of this country.Read fullresponseThe Negro must continue to contend for all therights, privileges, and opportunities accordedother American citizens. He must be unyieldingthis respect. He ought to ally himself with anypolitical party that will further these ends.Read fullresponseI feel that the Negro has many reasons to behopeful. Of course there are many things thatare deplorable; but on the other hand thereare so many opportunities already open to usthat we do not take advantage of that wewould do well to spend less time in findingfault and use that time preparing ourselvesfor larger activities and more usefulness.Read fullresponseMy own confident hope is that therewill be ultimately a satisfactory issueto all present race difficulties.Read fullresponseI regard it as essential that political privilegesbe granted to men regardless of color, thesame qualifications demanded of all in anabsolutely impartial manner. 1 regard educationas indispensable and believe in equal facilitiesfor it. . . . . The problem of the AmericanNegro is difficult to solve upon a basis ofperpetual segregation. It is particularlydesirable that there shall be no segregation inthe higher institutions of learning. Industrialand manual activities should be elements in thecourse of study for colored people as for allpeople but not the only elements nor even theprincipal ones. I think that the colored peopleshould be stimulated to acquire property and tobecome fixed in their communities. In order thatthis may happen it is necessary to secure for theNegro greater protection of life and property.Read fullresponseWith education and the right tovote—for both of which the Negro mustwork and fight daily—he will win theplace which is his here in America.Read fullresponsePersistent, definite and determined effort alongall legitimate lines of education, coupledwith an all-controlling desire to stick tothe right, will not only win for the Negro therespect of America but will give him a placeimmortal in the history of the world.Read fullresponseEducate him in the highest and bestway possible so as to enable him tosuccessfully compete with every other elementof Americanism in every walk of life.Read fullresponseThe accumulation of property will do more torelieve the American Negro of many hardships anddisadvantages than any other agency. This shouldnot be the case but it is. The ability to thinkwell (generally the result of thoro training)should outrank the ability to live well (theresult of accumulated wealth). First trainthe mind; then in order to be highly regardedby Americans own some of the world’s goods.Read fullresponseThe Negro race would be much stronger ifthere were more who could see the benefitof a college education, be it in theprofessional line or in trade. I thinkthe higher education of the Negro racewill tend towards reducing race prejudice.Read fullresponse1. The Negro must be an active voter. 2. He mustbe encouraged to engage in what he is by naturefitted to follow, this not to be determined byone man or set of men but by the individual. 3.He should study the conditions of his communityand enter such activities as he can. He shouldstrive to establish himself in every line ofbusiness possible. 4. He should study mining andmanufacturing. He should become an intelligentfarmer, vegetable raiser and cotton producer. 5.He should be more thoroly grounded in mechanicsthat he may become an inventor. Our collegescould look out for this. There should be nocheap course in mechanics. 6. Our schools andother institutions should teach everything thatis necessary to make the pupils serviceableand life enjoyable. 7. The Negro should beurged to content peaceably and earnestly foreverything that is needed to make him a man.Read fullresponseThe Negro is passing through a criticalperiod of his existence in America and noone can say with certainty what the result willbe. To my mind, however, it is clear that hewill come out with a loss of political power andinterest, but greatly strengthened in wealth,intelligence, and manhood which will ultimatelyforce political recognition and considerationand the full enjoyment of civil rights. TheNegro is undergoing a refining and hardeningprocess which tho humiliating and painful willin the end make him stronger and better and willprove a blessing to him and to his posterity.Read fullresponseIf the Negro is given protection andan equal opportunity in the industrialworld he will succeed as a race.Read fullresponseI think that with better rural schools, longerterms, better teachers, a more practical educationfor the masses and a higher and more thoroeducation for the leaders, more effective andaggressive religious training with a practicalreligion that we live and not simply talkand shout, we shall ultimately build forourselves character and accumulate wealth, acombination which merits and demands respect.This done the future will take care of itself.Read fullresponseI believe the Negro should secure all the trainingthe American school system, public and private,can give. He should then enter some occupation,business or professional, for which he seemsfitted individually regardless of traditionor prejudice. As he labors he should linkhimself to every movement for the betterment ofthe social and economic life of the community inwhich he casts his lot. He should preservea manly, courageous attitude on all questionspertaining to the Suture of his race to theend that the traditional ideals of his peoplebecome a significant and serviceable factor inAmerican civilization. He must seek to show thathis uplift, political, social and religious,is necessary to the progress of all America.Read fullresponseThe Negro should occupy and improve everyworthy position attainable. In a manly andhonorable way he should protest against anyracial discrimination shown against him. Heshould study carefully his white neighborand strive in every honest way to live inharmony with him. He should qualifyhimself politically as well as otherwise andbecome interested in all questions affectinghumanity in general and himself in particular.Read fullresponseThe ideal must be reached after: not on thebasis of color or race or any such physicaldivisions or distinctions, but on the basisof humanity. Only by the way of frank, full,free opportunities can we hope for the ideal.The Negro American must he accorded absolutesocial and political equality and all therights guaranteed under a pure democracy.Read fullresponseAll kinds of activities are essential tothe growth and proper development of apeople. Diversification in educationand pursuit is necessary if a people is tobe of the highest good to the country.Read fullresponseStrong, well-trained leadership for the masses.Educational opportunities unrestricted forall as the case may demand. Retention ofthe right of suffrage and the display of moreindependence in the matter of voting. Abetter trained ministry to inculcate sound moralteaching. The organizing in cities of clubsfor civic improvement and for demanding bettergrammar school training for Negro children andfor teaching the masses, as far as possible,the proper meaning and duties of citizenship.Read fullresponseEncouraging business enterprises. Vigorouslyopposing the doctrine of servility andsubmission-but not service. Co-operation asfar as possible and wherever warranted with fairand right-minded whites for civic improvement.Read fullresponseIf the Negro is given a chance and equal rightsas a citizen -he will eventually climb as highand accomplish as much as any race or people hasaccomplished. A college training is not hadfor him nor does it unfit him for usefulness asis often said; but he is better able to meetthe demands and responsibilities of the times.Read fullresponseIn spite of the evidences of prejudice everywherein our country, I believe that the Negro willsome day become a big factor in the political lifeof the nation and occupy an enviable place in theeconomic development of the United States.He has already made a marvelous record-a recordthat should give every man with Negro bloodin his veins the highest hope for the future.Read fullresponseI believe that the American Negro mustlive and die in America. Africa is not hishome for he would be an absolute strangerthere. I believe in the ultimate triumph ofright. I believe that we will receive ourrights and be given full citizenship when we asa people demand the same 3rd not until then.Read fullresponseIf the Negro will be wise and educate himself inthe trades and the professions, get homes andown land and build up a strong moral character,he will eventually come into his own and befully recognized as an American citizen.Read fullresponseThe Negro must work and fight and fight andwork. He must scorn peace earned at the priceof his self-respect. He must deport himselfas a man and he must insist on being treatedas a man in America. Much time must begiven to the bettering of his environment sothat he can will to his children far bettersurroundings than he himself has inherited.Finally, he must cultivate more of the religionof self-respect and less of the religion of fear.Read fullresponseThe Negro should be given every opportunityand encouraged to get the very best educationpossible-college education in every possiblecase before entering a professional school.I think Negroes should enter professions andtrades, after college, after tastes lead themand wherever there is likely to be a demand forsuch professions and trades. They should ownhomes and acquire additional property as muchas they can. They should have a better educatedministry and more thoroly trained teachers.Read fullresponseI think that full political rights and a moremodified social code may be inaugurated in thefuture. These higher attainments are not possibleuntil the Negro catches the true spirit of thecommercial age in which he lives and lays aneconomic substructure as his foundation. Wemust produce a substantial capitalist class.Such a state of economy admits of a leisureclass. If this leisure class is composedof persons who are cultured, thrifty andenergetic I see no reason why full, politicalrights should not be attained and a widelymodified social code substituted for the shamof ignorance under which we are now living. Ithink education can help ameliorate conditions.Read fullresponseA leadership more broadly educated. An intelligentand consistent agitation for the securing of ourcitizenship rights. A manly stand in all thingspertaining to civil, social and moral questions.A right-about-face with regard to the matterof the education of the youth of our race; thatis, less industrialism and more intelligence.Read fullresponseI most strenuously urge that our people,all of them, get the best possible trainingin the best colleges and universities of thecountry and affiliate with all the forcesand organizations making for the moral andreligious development of all the people.In the meantime, I would add, encourage inevery way possible all the organizationsfor the material growth of the country.Read fullresponseUndoubtedly prejudice is increasing rather thandiminishing. This has been brought to our mindsmore forcibly by the passage of the 'grandfatherclause' amendment to the constitution of thisstate. We who are here in Oklahoma feel thatcolonization has brought it about as much asanything. Wherever our people congregate inlarge numbers there very soon begins the agitationfor disfranchisement. Were it possible forthe race to be widely diffused over the UnitedStates, so that they might acquire wealth like theso-called superior race, and be found only a fewin any one place, there would be no race problem.Read fullresponseI believe that the acquirement of education andwealth, the teaching of a saner and purerreligion, performance of duties and a demandfor all our rights under the law will bringa brighter day for the Negro in America.Read fullresponseI believe that education coupled witha good moral and religious trainingwill be the main factor in thesolution of the Negro problem in America.Read fullresponseI am rather an enthusiast on the return ofa goodly portion of the Negroes to Africa as afinal solution, by his voluntary and gradualmove as he realizes that he can hardly expectto attain to a full measure of citizenship inall that the word implies in this country.Read fullresponseThe Negro will ever remain in America.Citizenship and opportunity will increase as theNegro grows in stability, wealth and intelligence.Prejudice will be forced to abate as slaveryrecedes and the Negro acquires independence.Read fullresponseI believe that as the Negro and the whiteman are educated up to the truth of thelegal equality of all men under our Americangovernment each will come to see that allmust enjoy the same privileges. Neitheris yet equal to the occasion. There are fewNegroes who are aggressive and demand, anda few philanthropic whites who acknowledgeand concede equal opportunities for all men.Read fullresponseThe Negro is growing more assertive andmanly. Every day gives us new evidencesof the fact that he is becoming moreappreciative of his right to life, libertyand property. He is beginning to meetimposition with opposition, even with his life.Read fullresponseThe Negro needs leaders and instructors who willteach that he is a man and therefore must have allthe aids to the better life and good citizenshipthat other men require; that to become acitizen in the true sense he must enjoy the sameopportunities and benefits as other citizens.Read fullresponseThe Negro must measure up to the standard of a manin all respects if he hopes to gain what otherraces have gained. Hence he must be impressedwith the necessity of preparing himself. Theyoung Negro must be inspired with reminders ofwhat other Negroes have accomplished. Hemust he taught not to close the door of hopeupon himself, even in though he must be madeto feel that competency must win, has won.Read fullresponseTo me, the outlook for the Negro racein America is bright or dark owing to thedeportment of the Negro himself. If hewill make use of the opportunities he has ineducating himself, saving his money, acquiringproperty and in being a law-abiding citizenthere is no law that can successfully stop him.Read fullresponseLet him cease to be a cringing suppliant;assert his manhood intelligently; speak outagainst unjust discrimination and laws thataffect him; demand a competent leadershipin pulpit, school training and politics; givehis children the highest possible training andrepudiate the stigma of being fit only for theworkshop; demand the rights guaranteed to citizensby the Constitution; get property; migratefrom the South to all parts of the country.Read fullresponseThe Negro came to America not by his ownvolition and is here to stay. I believe heshould contend for all his rights as an Americancitizen and enter all lines of competitionwith the other races in this country.'Read fullresponseThe Negro in America should be educated justas any other race in America. One phase ofeducation should not be too much emphasizedabove another. All phases are necessary for thehighest realization of any race. Negroes shoulddemand their rights. It is nonsense to expectperfect harmony between two races so situatedas the Negroes and whites of America. Theday which brings perfect harmony in Americamust bring at the same time amalgamation.Read fullresponsePersecution is a friend of progress. The verythings that are denied us we shall stillwant-and we shall supply them ourselves.Whatever community tries to keep the Negro downmust stay there with him. The two thingsindispensable to the Negro's advance are moneyand education, both of which things are beingslowly but surely acquired by individuals andby Negro communities. . . . . I have no doubtthat prejudice is growing but I do believe itis a jealous prejudice and an outgrowth of thedesire to keep the Negro in a slave's position.Read fullresponseI believe that the ultimate solutionof the race problem is amalgamation.Read fullresponseWe ought now to have all the rights andprivileges which are guaranteed by the FederalConstitution. We must agitate and fight tothe last ditch for them. Nothing is worthhaving if it is not worth fighting for.Read fullresponseWith the highest possible training, theacquisition of property and the launching outinto all kinds of business enterprises, theNegro in America will succeed and become amighty power in the affairs of this country.Read fullresponseIndustry, economy, obedience to all justlaws-in short, the same principles which arehelpful to any other race; morality, wealth andeducation being big factors in the solution ofour problem; business enterprises of variouskinds which will give employment to the averageboy and girl of our race, allowing him toaspire to the highest place in the business.Read fullresponseThe Negro needs simply the proper trainingand a fair chance in the business world alongwith a square deal before the law and hewill find a way or make one along by the sideof America's best citizens. We must insiston a thoro education however. No limitededucation in any particular will suffice.Read fullresponseThe Negroes in America will never, develop tothe extent of their capacity, will never becomea great people, not even a free people, untilthey have political rights equal to the whiterace. The man who has no political rights hasno way of protecting himself and family.Read fullresponseWhile he must give all due attention to hisduties, the Negro must not so act now or atany time as to give the impression that he issatisfied to give up even temporarily any of therights that belong to him as a man. In thepresent swift revolving scheme of industrialAmerica, the right to vote is paramount.Read fullresponseThe Negroes ought to have every rightguaranteed by the Constitution of the UnitedStates. We are American citizens and shouldaccept no treatment that does not applyequally to every other American citizen.Read fullresponseThe masses should be trained in such a way as toknow well their rights and duties as citizensand should be urged to faithfully performtheir duties and quietly, firmly, persistentlydemand their rights. . . . . The Negromen who are really qualified to speak shouldtake a bold, manly stand for the race.Read fullresponseThe future of the Negro in this countrywill depend upon the kind of training givento the Negro youth. The same kind oftraining which has made other races great isalso necessary to make the Negro race great.Read fullresponseThe Negro must become a part of all the lifeabout him. He must become Americanized in thebest and largest sense. He should be led out ofthe consciousness that he must have anythingless than other citizens enjoy. All kinds ofeducation, all forms of wealth and a knowledgeof the ways of the American world are his needsfor this achievement. Each one of us mustrefuse to turn from any avenue of life becauseother men think it is not for Negroes. Wemust work, think and live independent of thedictates of those who regard us as less thanother men. The best of us should give of ourmeans, our time and ourselves to leaven the whole.College-bred Negroes should live these ideas amongthe masses and teach them to their children.

The survey that Du Bois and the seniors in that year’s sociology course created, and sent out across the United States, in addition to soliciting information about their lives and accomplishments that could be compiled as statistics, also included four questions that encouraged long-form response.

These included their thoughts on their own “early life and training,” their plans to educate their children, the “chief hindrances” they had faced, and their “present practical philosophy in regard to the Negro race in America,” which was abbreviated in the published study as “philosophy of life.”

About 800 responses to the survey were received, which were published in the 1910 study.

We visualize these four sets of responses here. Each of the responses are represented as a dot, placed under the appropriate question.

Clicking each dot displays a key phrase from the response it represents.

Clicking on the phrase reveals the full response from which it is drawn, providing a window into that person’s thoughts even as they remain unnamed.

Thus we close this chapter, and this project, with our own contribution to Du Bois’s project: a visualization of the meaning-making power of data, which we hope also holds space to acknowledge the limits of what data--and, by extension, data visualization--could do.

Conceptual takeaways

  • Always recall the power of visualization (again)
  • Consider when that power should be aligned with political goals
  • Consider how to combine visualization with a commitment to act
  • Reorient towards a goal of knowledge or justice, not visualization itself

Practical takeaways

  • Align your visualization projects with your values
  • Honor and credit the contributions of each team member
  • Consider how to combine visualization with other knowledge-making forms
  • Know that change also requires a commitment to act

NOTES

  1. Note that this was not the main US exhibition space, which was reserved for a unified (and white) view of the nation. Need cite.
  2. W.E.B. Du Bois, “The American Negro in Paris,” The American Monthly Review of Reviews 22.5 (November 1900), p. 576.
  3. On The Philadelphia Negro as the antecedent to the Paris Exposition charts, see Alexander Weheliye, "Diagrammatics as Physiognomy: W.E.B. Du Bois's Graphic Modernities," CR: The New Centennial Review 15.2 (2015): 23-58.
  4. In addition, it is worth noting that the visualization designer Jason Forrest believes that there is evidence of an additional chart, bringing the total to 64. See "Discovering an Unknown Chart from W.E.B. Du Bois's 'The Exhibition of American Negroes'," Nightingale: The Journal of the Data Visualization Society, January 1, 2019.
  5. Du Bois, " The American Negro in Paris," The American Monthly Review of Reviews 22.5 (November 1900), p. 576.
  6. Add in Hyperallergenic, other examples.
  7. Give explanation for this claim (Atlanta University Studies).
  8. Mabel O. Wilson, "The Cartography of W.E.B. Du Bois's Color Line," in Battle-Baptiste and Rusert, p. 39.
  9. Henry Gannett, “Transmittal Letter,” in The Statistical Atlas of the United States, based upon the results of the eleventh census (Washington, D.C.: Govt. print., 1898), p. 3.
  10. See Battle-Baptiste and Rusert.
  11. Du Bois, "The American Negro in Paris," p. 577.
  12. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Library of America, 1903), p. 8; quoted in Shawn Michelle Smith, Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 2004) p. 25. For more on the photographs, see the Library of Congress, A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress (New York: Amistad-HarperCollins, 2003).
  13. Historian of photography Deborah Willis identifies one of these photographers as the prominent Black portraitist Thomas Askew. Others remain unknown. See "The Sociologist's Eye: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Paris Exposition," in A Small Nation of People, pp. 51-78.
  14. Battle-Baptiste and Rusert, p. 15.
  15. Data Feminism, pp. ##.
  16. W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, ed. Irene Diggs (New Brunswick NJ: Transaction, 1984), p. 51.
  17. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn p. 67.
  18. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn p. 67.
  19. Dusk of Dawn pp. 67-8.
  20. This was the legislation that, as Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert explain, “stretch[ed] from the slave codes of the colonial and antebellum period to the segregationist policies and laws of the present,” and which attempted to control and constrain all aspects of Black life (19). Du Bois’s transcription of the Black Codes filled three large manuscript volumes. For a sustained meditation on the legacy of the Black Codes and their relation to contemporary digital life, see the special issue of The Black Scholar on "Black Code," edited by Jessica Marie Johnson and Mark Anthony Neal, and in particular, the introduction, "Wild Seed in the Machine," The Black Scholar 47.3 (2017): 1-2.
  21. The annual “Du Bois Challenge,” for example, seeks to “celebrate his data visualization legacy by recreating the visualizations showcased at the 1900 Paris Exposition using modern tools. [Cite website. ]
  22. Chalabi traces her own inspiration to a recent exhibition of work by the Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates. See Mona Chalabi "W.E.B. Du Bois: Retracing his attempt to challenge racism with data," The Guardian, February 14, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/14/web-du-bois-racism-data-paris-african-americans-jobs
  23. https://www.dignityanddebt.org/projects/student-debt-calculator/
  24. The project is also notable for how it acknowledges the role of policy change. As the website explains, “Visualizations can render data to make it meaningful for people around the world. Furthermore, they are able to reveal what might be either changed or strengthened through policy and individual action.” https://www.dignityanddebt.org/projects/student-debt-contest/
  25. As we share in Data Feminism, “In 2015, communications researcher Candice Lanius wrote a widely shared blog post, “Fact Check: Your Demand for Statistical Proof is Racist,” in which she summarizes the ample research on how those in positions of power accept anecdotal evidence from those like themselves, but demand endless statistics from minoritized groups. In those cases, she argues convincingly, more data will never be enough” (##).
  26. Mimi Onuoha, "In Absentia" (2019), https://mimionuoha.com/in-absentia, accessed February 21, 2021.
  27. In relaying this anecdote, Battle-Baptiste and Rusert also observe its “close proximity to the hold of the ship” (17).
  28. Reference Data for Black Lives and Milner’s idea of abolishing big data.
  29. Note about deleterious effects of white supremacy on white people too, cf. Jessie Daniels.
  30. "The Georgia Negro Exhibit for the Paris Exposition," The Bulletin of Atlanta University, May 1900, p. 2.
  31. W.E.B. Du Bois, A Soliloquy on viewing my life from the last decade of its first century, ca. 1961. W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. p. 18.
  32. "Atlanta University Exhibit At Paris,"'The Atlanta Journal, February 22, 1900. Archives Research Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, Box 23, folder 6; "Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Atlanta University, 1899-1900," Atlanta University Bulletin (Catalogs) 31. Archives Research Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center.
  33. Silas Munro, “Plates,” in Battle-Baptiste and Rusert, p. 50.
  34. Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (Oakland: Univ. of California Press, 2015), p. 71.
  35. "Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Atlanta University, 1899-1900," p. 14.
  36. In the report published in advance of the 1900 Atlanta Conference, on the life trajectories and achievements of college-educated Black citizens, Du Bois describes his "general method" of distributing surveys to "about fifty" "experienced correspondents throughout the South," drawing from a network of "graduates of Atlanta, Fisk, and other institutions." See The College-Bred Negro, ed. W.E.B. Du Bois (Atlanta: Atlanta Univ. Press, 1900), p. 10.