And with that, thank you very much for attending. And I'll hand over to Jason. Well, thank you very much. I apologise for the interruption in our scheduling previously, so I'm delighted to be here today. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. All right, can you guys see it? Awesome, awesome. So. As you know, I am Jason Forest. I am currently the director of Interactive Data Visualisation at the Koven Response Centre at McKinsey.
Not necessarily the director. The director of all interactive data visualisation from McKinsey. Just just my own little IP, my own little happy island. But, you know, I first encountered WBB DeBois data visualisations early in twenty eighteen. At the time there was very little research about the work and I became obsessed with learning about more about it so that I could help to tell its story. It's been a remarkable journey and one that I was completely unprepared for.
So before I start, I want to just take caution to say that the word Negro will appear frequently in this talk. It's not a word I take lightly, but it's the term that Dubois uses throughout this phase in his career. And I think it's best to honour and contextualise his use of language. So the nineteen hundred Paris Exposition was created to celebrate the achievements of the 19th century and sought to accelerate innovation in the next.
It was designed around the Eiffel Tower, built for the eighteen eighty nine exposition. But it was 10 times larger, expanding all the way to the newly created Grand Palais. The fair was visited by nearly 50 million people and displayed many inventions for the first time, including the Ferris wheel, the diesel engine, the escalator and the first talking films. By the way, my wife challenged me about that. And I went back into the research. Yes, indeed.
The first talking films in nineteen hundred fifty six countries, including the U.S., participated in creating pavilions representing their respective cultures. But special exhibits were located elsewhere. So the exhibit of American Negroes, which we'll be discussing today, was housed in the palace of social economy shown here.
But it's important to see the nineteen hundred exposition in the balance of history as a century of unprecedented innovation and widespread change was coming to an end in 1833. The very term science was invented in 1863. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. The US civil war comes to an end, and as a result of the reconstruction period, former slaves are now granted unprecedented rights under the 14th Amendment. But racist lawmakers gained power across the southern states.
It's in the 18 nineties and Jim Crow laws began to radically rollback these rights under the guise of separate but equal segregation. This illustration from the eighteen ninety three Chicago Exposition adds further insult to injury by mocking the members of the human zoo known as the Dahomey village. A few years later, another racist human zoo display is featured in the eighteen ninety five Atlanta Exposition.
Outraged by the exhibit's lawyer, Thomas J. Calloway sends a letter to hundreds of African-American leaders across the country that says, quote, to the Paris Exposition, thousands upon thousands will go a well selected and prepared exhibit representing the Negroes development will attract attention and do a great and lasting good and convincing thinking people of the possibilities of the Negro.
Thomas Calloway was a classmate of Dubois from Fisk University, and both men were in close contact with the most recognised African-American leader at the time, Booker T. Washington. A plan was crafted along with Daniel Murray, the assistant librarian of Congress, and the team was awarded fifteen thousand dollars from the US Congress only four months before the opening of the Exposition.
Dubois was the obvious choice to lead the effort as chief curator, and he began to quickly compile the work on Dec. 20 aides eighteen ninety nine with his students from Atlanta University. What follows is a frenzy of activity in just four months. Prominent citizens, educators and students across the country began to assemble the materials. The five great Negro schools of Atlanta Fisk, Howard, Hampton and Tuskegee universities prepare exhibits.
Dubois and his students conduct a sociological study in Georgia and begin to hand draw the 60 plus charts. Daniel Murray collects more than a thousand books and pamphlets by Negro authors. War heroes are documented businesses. Church and black newspapers from across the countries send in photographs of their finest and best. Four hundred patents by African-Americans are collected as a subtle nod to systemic prejudice.
Dubois Hand writes over 400 pages documenting the erosion of civil liberties known as the Black Code at the Black Codes. After working tirelessly on the exhibit for months, Dubois writes in his diary that he was, quote, threatened with nervous frustration and had little money left to buy passage to Paris. But he did. But he did arrive just in time. He quickly set up the exhibit in time for the judges. Despite missing some of the materials from the universities.
But the judges still recognised the exhibit by awarding it several prises, including an overall grand prise and Dubois a special gold medal. The resulting exhibition was a targeted attempt to sway the world's scientifically minded elite to acknowledge the American Negro in an attempt to influence cultural change in the U.S. from abroad.
Pulitzer prise winning biographer David Levering Lewis writes, quote, In many ways, a Negro exhibit represented the last hurrah of men and women of culture and accomplishment who still aspired to full citizenship rights regardless of colour. While the judges awarded the exhibit with several prises, as you can see here,
the direct impact of the exhibit of American Negroes is hard to measure. While the African-American press reported on the exhibit, gleeful excitement, the European media only mentioned the exhibit in passing and the white American press completely ignored it. The American public never even knew the exhibit of American Negroes even existed, despite the work by DeBois, Calloway and the extended community to show the show off the best of what African-Americans had to offer.
The exhibit was met with indifference. But let's take a step back and look at William Edward Burghart Dubois. He was the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. Previously, Dubois studied at Humboldt University in Berlin and travelled in Europe before ultimately landing his first academic job at the University of Philadelphia, desperate to help the plight of the African-American population.
He quickly turned to the recently developing fields of the social sciences in an attempt to collect compelling evidence needed for cultural change. Dubois was rigorous in his approach and tried to incorporate the latest scientific standards. He said, quote, The American Negro deserves study for the great end of advancing the cause of science in general.
No such opportunity to watch and measure the history and development of a great race of men ever presented itself to the scholars of a modern nation. Arriving in Philadelphia after graduating from Harvard, he created his first Watership study. The Philadelphia Negro in eighteen ninety nine, compiled nearly by himself. Dubois personally conducted some 5000 interviews to complete the study.
Here's a spread from the book, which shows some of his data visualisations clearly focussing on the scientific presentation of the statistical data. Dubois was very ambitious. That same year, he outlined a 10 year study of the American Negro seen as a continuation of the Philadelphia Negro research, and he conducted a similar study in Virginia. Dubois actually moved to Atlanta before the Philadelphia Negro is published.
So when Callaway suggested Dubois become the curator of the exhibit for the Nineteen Hundred Exposition, Dubois naturally proposed as a study of the Georgia Negro. Like I said, Dubois was very ambitious, and at the time he wrote, quote, I wanted to set down my aim and method in some outstanding way, which would bring my work to the thinking world.
The Great World's Fair at Paris was being planned, and I thought I might put my findings into plans, charts and figures so one might see what we were trying to accomplish. Dubois recalls the creation of the exhibit. In his autobiography, written at the age of 90. Quote, I got a couple of my best students and put a series of facts on the charts. The size and growth of the Negro American group, its division by age and sex, its distribution, education and occupations, its books and periodicals.
We made a most interesting set of drawings, limned on pasteboard cards about a yard square and mounted on a number of movable standards. The details of finishing these 50 or more charts in colours with accuracy was terribly difficult, with little money, limited time and not much encouragement. The resulting exhibition was more than just a scientific report.
DeBois set out to make a target attempt to sway the world's elite by upending the stereotypes and presenting a modern, successful and educated people. He set out to do this by crafting a structured statistical argument of the quantitative facts. On the first chart in the series, he leads with the statement, quote, The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the colour line. It's a phrase he uses again in the book that brought him global fame in nineteen, 1983, The Souls of Black Folk.
One of the most powerful examples of data visualisation was made one hundred and twenty years ago by an all African-American team led by Dubois. Only thirty seven years after the end of slavery in the United States. The data visualisations the exhibit are split into two sections. The Georgian Negro, which focuses on the typical state of Georgia, which had the second largest African-American population, Virginia was the largest, by the way, and the highest Negro to white ratio.
The other section is called, quote, a series of sophistical charts illustrating the condition of the descent of the descendants of former African slaves now in residence in the United States of America, which focuses on the national and international view of the data. The exact sequence of how DeBois made the chart is not entirely known, but the Library of Congress has the Georgia Negro as the first of the two.
This is the sequences as defined potentially even by Daniel J. Murray himself when he entered them into the Library of Congress a few years after the exhibition. But we'll come back to the whole sequence a little bit. Let's start to dig into the work by looking at an international view of the data in Negro population of the United States compared with the total population of other countries.
This map diagram shows us the comparison between a smaller seven point five million populated all Negro America, two other countries all drawn in proportion to their populations. DeBois makes a comparison in terms of nationhood. Clearly inferring the existence of an independent black state that exists as an equivalent to the established European countries like Spain,
England and Hungary. You'll notice that the chart is in English and French so that the widest group of exposition guests can read the labels. Pivoting them from the international to the national in the next chart in the series, DeBois visualises Negro population growth as a small nation growing inside of the American silhouette. Dubois elegantly crafts a complicated, complex argument as a silhouette of the country grows.
The Negro population also grows not as a at a faster rate, but as a distinctly different entity. This is not a line or bar chart to compare numbers. Dubois again visualises the data in terms of distinct nations when viewed alongside the preceding image showing a fully Negro populated US in comparison to European countries. Dubois clearly implies the possibility of a separate Negro nation state.
This chart and literacy of the American Negro compared with that of other nations is from the second series and you'll notice the printed title at the top of the chart. If there was a breakout idea that challenged the status quo, it's this finding by Dubois. One could almost hear his surprise when he wrote, quote, Negro illiteracy is less than that of Russia and only equal to that of hungry,
while Negroes were synonymous with being undereducated. Dubois shows that several European countries had a higher illiteracy rate. He's literally saying to the audience at the Paris Exposition, Are we really so different than you? The finality and the one world title illiteracy speaks volumes in this chart. The period at the end of the title helps to underscore the severity of the statement from the Georgian Negro series.
This chart is an unusual plodding of time versus rate, with time on the vertical and bars extending from each access to form a sort of lattice. DeBois is only telling part of the largest story in this chart. As the white illiteracy rate in nineteen hundred was only six point two percent. But Dubois was not highlighting the racial disparity in the series. Instead, he was focussing on the decrease in literacy and overall progress in the African-American community.
Here's an example of an updated version by database's superstar and Guardian contributor Mona Chalabi, where she updates the chart with the latest available data. I show it as a quick example of how the visualisations of the past can inspire the forms of data storytelling in the present. Income and expenditure of one hundred and fifty. Negro families in Atlanta, Georgia, USA is probably the most unique chart in the series.
It is singular in its horizontal format and features a unique design within the exhibit. The chart access so as acts as a sort of key to the entire series as it humanises the data. The top row of a chart is like an expanded legend with rent, food, clothes, taxes and other expenses also doubling as column headers that are map to the colours we see in the horizontal stack bar below. This chart actually comes at the end of the Georgia Negro series.
It's number thirty one, but actually was displayed as the introduction to the charts in the exhibit. As you can see here in the original photograph on the inset image, you can see the coin and photos of the Charn DeBois. You see mixed media on the chart to connect the data to the rest of the exhibit, which relied heavily on images of prosperous, successful African-Americans that challenged conventions.
As my research intensified, so did my questions and I found myself in contact with the Library of Congress prints and photographs division. After six weeks of correspondence with the librarians, I was permitted, quote, very special permission to view only one of the data of the Dubois original charts in person. It was a real tip, thrilled to see the handmade work and examine the actual pen marks I'd been studying for months already.
As you can see, the charts are quite large at twenty seven by twenty two inches. That's my computer there for scale. This is also the only work in the series to feature gold leaf and coloured crayon as well as the collage photographs. It's also an important chart, as I argue, that Dubois was actually amongst the first designers to consider their their visualisations to be interactive as evident in the label.
For further statistics, raise this frame. This photo that I took of the original work shows how the chart was physically handled. And these marks suggest the indentation of the fingernails of the Paris Exposition. Guests exploring details like these could only be possible by being the original works and certainly helps to understand the context and creation of the work. Since the charts were made to be handled, they were sequenced to explore new layers of data and each subsequent chart.
It's likely that a jump from one chart to another was synonymous. And Dubois's time to a double click in ARS. Out of the 60 charts in the exhibit, I find personally find this work to be the most compelling proportion of freedmen and slaves amongst American Negroes. The label slaves arranged inside of the mountainous black area is still a kick in the gut. The green ribbon at the top of the chart shows the ratio of free to enslaved African-Americans over roughly a century.
There are many different ways that DeBois could have charted this data by putting the focus on the Freemen both in the coloured ribbon as well as by listening out the percentages of each decade. It emphasises their minority in comparison to the massive black area below the story. It tells a simple for 76 years, no less than eighty six percent of all African-Americans in the U.S. were slaves. But the nuance story remains on the right side of the chart.
The immense a proclamation of the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1st, 1863. Yet it takes an additional seven years and a civil war for the remaining six million, six hundred and seventy five thousand slaves to gain their freedom. Here's a chart from the Georgia Negro series. And as you can see, it's made in much the same way as the chart that preceded it.
This time we see the percentage of freed Negroes over the same 73 year, three year period as a red area cascading down the right side of the chart, wavering between point seven and one point seven percent until it reaches one hundred percent at the bottom. Let's look at the 1860 census to get some sense of scale of the total population of one million. Fifty seven thousand people in Georgia. Four hundred and sixty two thousand were slaves.
That's forty four percent of the entire population. As I said a second ago, the chart on the right is a sort of rotated view of the chart on the left. DeBois is careful to keep similar types of data in their comparative modes while exploring each data set to highlight the story on each level of granularity. This chart, occupations of Negroes and whites in Georgia is also from the Georgia Negro series.
It presents a dazzling, near symmetrical chart of DeBois own design or two mirrored fan charts display corresponding categories, allowing the direct comparison across an event horizon that effectively delineates the colour line. The legend applies equally to both groups, and the distribution of the occupations between the two groups is surprisingly similar. Negro farmers are only two percent lower than white farmers.
Negroes have a considerably higher percentage of service occupations, while whites have considerably more industrial and mechanical jobs. But they're displayed here is as comparable units within a circular hole. I find this chart to be quite effective while non-traditional. Even now, it's intuitive and using the right data could easily be used again today. But with this chart, I also want to address what I think is a misconception.
A number of articles have come out have called that the striking design and limited primary colours of the charts to press age modernism, while this concept is very appealing. I believe it is an incorrect. As I mentioned earlier, Dubois considered himself to be an academic and he was deeply versed in the most contemporary methods of depicting data. Dubois had studied many sociological texts, including the work of Henry Gannett, which he referred in the Philadelphia Negro the year before.
So it's obvious that Dubois was familiar with Gannett Statistical Atlas of the United States, featuring luxuriously illustrated maps and charts, as well as sociological data incorporated into the work. Considering the boys and teen were under such strict time constraints, luxuries like printing were clearly out of the question. The resulting handmade works gained an artistic dimension that is missing from the more scientific work at the time.
Each chart would need to be hand painted watercolour on fit card, and it's likely that Dubois chose. You chose to use watercolours by George C. Osborne, manufactured in Philadelphia. He likely chose basic primary colours for his for their ability to easily imprint on his scientifically minded European audience. He stripped away any decoration in order to make the charts more effective, and the precisions of the charts conveyed scientific authenticity.
While the works are remarkably beautiful, they were likely crafted for influence, not artistic merit. So if you'll just excuse me for a moment, let's take a little due to detour into art history, while precursors to modernism were president present in the 19th century. The concept of modernism wasn't really established until the other isms, like surrealism, had crystallised around Europe in the first years of the 20th century.
This took time and most of the modernists were simply too young to have been directly inspired by the works at the Exposition in nineteen hundred. Picasso was 19 years old and travelled from Spain to Paris for only a few months in the fall. Walter Gropius, who started the ball powerhouse, was only 17. Laszlo Mahal motherly knowledge was only five p.m. Mondrian was twenty eight, but was living in the Netherlands.
Kandinsky, also 28, but had just traded a career and long to attend art school in Munich. The fusion of science and art that fuelled modernism in general and in specific, the Bolthouse in Vienna Circle was certainly a similar space at DeBois was operating in two years earlier. But as a sociologist, one could only imagine what might have happened if he and his team had found the right support at the Paris Exposition.
Had the impact of the exhibit of American Negroes. Been an international touchstone. Dubois might have crap continue to craft just statistical charts and the line between this work and what was to come in. Art and design might have been possible. OK. Back to statistics, this chart, acres of land owned by Negroes in Georgia also comes from the Georgia Negro series.
Not only do we see the two hundred and fourteen percent increase in acres of land owned, but Dubois presents us the data in the shape of the state of Georgia itself. Dubois creates a visual analogy suggesting that Negroes are Georgia, which is a very optimistic statement despite the rise of Jim Crow laws designed to strip African-Americans of their legal rights. Yet the chart shows steady socio economic progress in spite of the prejudice.
So this is the most recognised chart by Dubois City and Rural Population 1890. It exemplifies the creativity Dubois employed in creating this work. And in some ways cements his place in history as a data of his innovator. It's an unusual chart and that that we now call the Dubois spiral. And while it is obscure, it actually does a very good job at showing massively disproportionate comparisons.
The chart tells a story of just how many more African-Americans lived in rural Georgia than in the smaller or larger cities. The large red spiral immediately leaves an impression, a visual beacon that draws the eye in in a way that few charts could. The innovation that Dubois' made was built on precedent, as it was common at the time, to simply bend a very long chart into a series, into a sort of a snake.
If it didn't fit in a lot of space and we see this on other charts from the same series on the right. Another way of looking at the Dubois spiral is to envision it as a horizontal stack bar chart and extremely long scale breaking the stack bar until a series of angles highlights. This is the disparity in the data and the resulting massive red spiral is a great way to focus on the main insight. Of course, as my illustration shows on the right, it could have also been an ordinary bar chart.
But if it were, I doubt I'd be speaking about it today. One hundred and twenty years later. This brings up an important idea that's easy to gloss over. But remember that Dubois was trying to impress his audience. He was trying to show off. And while many of the charts are traditional in their design haina that these kind of unusual forms would create more interest. Not all of the charts are created equal and sorry, not all charts are created equal.
And twenty two of the charts in the exhibit are fairly conventional. Bar charts are visual literacy allows us to quickly read traditional chart types, but at the same time it also makes them easier to forget the role of novelty in our chart. Making should not be devalued nor even dismissed as chart junk, but rather used to focus to focus our audience's attention on what matters. Clearly, this form resonated with audiences and it's proven to be historically important.
As a result of its novelty. Like I said earlier, I'm very interested in the sequence of the charts of the exhibition. I feel that learning about more about the sequence could help us understand how they were made and how they were meant to be viewed. As my research intensified to compile a list of the charts in sequential order as provided by the Library of Congress and then returned to the exhibition photo itself to look for more clues. What I found was shocking.
On the upper right side of the image of the chart that I could not identify and was not in the collection of the Library of Congress. I triple cheque the inventory and there was only one chart that was similar, but it was not the same design. I quickly started to play around with the image in Photoshop and found the highest resolution image I could. I could already see that it was indeed a unique new piece that had not been studied before.
So like anyone working on a research project, I then went and pleaded with a librarian for help. Luckily, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Library had the original image and sent over a high resolution version and. The decrease of literacy amongst the black freedman of the United States. This previously unknown work was hidden in plain sight. The quality of the image is now high enough to decipher the text.
The chart shows the 36 percent drop drop in a literacy of Friedman over a 30 year period. As you can see, as I was able to, I was also able to recolour the work based on the corresponding great scales in the image. There are only a few options available from the limited palette to choose from. And I believe that the green and black colour have a clear correlation with some of the charts we've seen earlier in the lecture.
I believe the newly discovered chart is a missing link between these three views of data for both illiteracy and the proportion of Freedman. The work creates a correlation between freedom and education and shows just how this systematic Dubois was in crafting his message and reinforcing it throughout the entire series. There are sixty three of DeBois charged from the exhibit of American Negroes in the collection of the Library of Congress by identifying a 60 fourth chart.
It opens up some additional ambiguity. As mentioned, some of the works in the second series have printed titles, which means they could that they were actually created first as it would take longer to get the titles printed. But the charts in the second series with green outlines here are actually hand lettered. So it could be that they were actually created at the end of the project. And if you think about it, it makes sense.
As a research and data collection for the Georgia Negro series was being conducted. Some of Dubois students were already draughting the initial charts. It's very likely that the team uncovered additional insights as they work. And since Dubois was committed to his structured argument, they would naturally find additional visual methods for telling the compelling story.
It's important to consider just how surprising this exhibition would have been as African-Americans were held in low esteem across the white world in nineteen hundred, while certainly free of the hostilities of white Americans. This exhibition was intended to curry favour with Europeans, many of which still harboured significant prejudice. Dubois and team took great care and considering how their exhibit would be perceived.
And it also makes sense. It's such a strong visual would take a very important place in the exhibit itself. Above the crowds in the line of sight from outside the exhibit. Certainly the story of the great improvements in literacy would have been more palatable than the story of slavery itself. Because this exhibit was not successful at the time. DeBois took an abrupt turn away from the social sciences and in 1983 he published the work that would bring his ideas to a global audience.
The Souls of Black Folks is a remarkable book that pairs elements of its ethnographic research with African-American poetry and spiritual songs. In the book, his anger, his anger boils through. His rage is paired with his brilliance, and his passionate voice quickly became recognised as a leader in the struggle for African-American rights. So it's interesting to think about this quote again, written in his biography at the age of 90, on his early years in social sciences, where had I failed?
There were many answers, but one was typically American. As the event proved, I did the deed, but I did not advertise it. In the long run, advertising without the deed was the only lasting value. Perhaps Americans do not realise how completely they have adopted this philosophy. But Madison Avenue does. The story of the exhibit of American Negroes is so compelling because it is the story of a missed opportunity.
It is ultimately a brilliant tragedy for the small nation of people that Dubois and has expanded. Team tried so hard to present to an indifferent white audience as viewers of this work in the present. We are all too aware of the inequalities that followed after the exhibit. We can point to the superior design and brilliant minds with the knowledge that their cause was not recognised until the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race,
colour, gender or national origin. Sixty four years later, knowing that a pivotal moment like this existed with such incredible opportunity for change all the way back in nineteen hundred gives additional perspective to the Black Lives Matter movement today. Now one hundred and twenty years later. While I'm thrilled to be discussing this today, the fact is that this work is still under explored and has yet to be embraced, embraced by mainstream academics.
Dubois abrupt turn away from the social sciences certainly necessitates the study of his career and impact later in his life. Yet at the same time, his role and his social in the social sciences remains less known. The charts of the exhibit were only digitised in 2013. In any previous study was done on the on the only available black and white microfilm versions.
There are a few rich sources of information, many by DeBois himself, such as the full recounting of the exhibit and the review of reviews, as well as a recently published book on the subject. WBB DeBois Data Portrait's Visualising Black America. But the fact remains that more research is waiting to be done not only on the context of the exhibit, but on the historic data itself as compiled by DeBois and his team. This is a rich source of information just waiting to be explored.
So wrapping up as I've gotten involved in researching and writing about these works, I have found there are more voices from the past that have just not been explored. I continually find amazing stories such as the work of Marine Doi Rahaf, wife and collaborator of Autonomy Rahaf, who taught at Oxford and her life's work of creating pictorial statistics for educational purposes.
Over and over again. I find graphic forms from the past that can inspire us to create new ways of communicating or visualising ideas today. This research has changed me as a person and as a practitioner. So I end my talk today by asking you what other stories out there are to be found and retold. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you very much indeed, Jason, that was captivating. So everyone should feel free to type questions into the chat so I can put them to Jason.
But I will use my chairs prerogative and start with one of my own, which was to ask how was he and his colleague able to get their hands on so much data? I mean, this you we we're struggling in these days with some of the Kobe things to get information on populations and some ethnic subgroups and all sorts of things. And so, you know, this is so long ago, I, you know, like I was particularly struck with the graph that you showed of Georgia and all those numbers for each year.
So what were the sources of data that you was able to access? So a great question. Thank you for asking it. I've been asked that question before. And my last quick answer was I kind of stumbled on it. I think I have a better one this time. So what's fascinating is there really there were statistical data sources about different types of races in the U.S. at the time. They go back roughly to the civil war, but not before, which makes sense.
Right. So what's fascinating about Dubois is that he conducted most of the research. So he had about as like 12 to 14 students at Atlanta University. There is there are some kind of remote students, I think one that lived in Virginia that was also connected to the programme, to the the project. And from what I can understand, in the four months leading up to the exhibition itself, they went out and found it.
They built the data sets themselves. OK, so not just data, visualise whose data collectors as well.