Re: Visualizing Black America

Famed sociologist, writer, and Black rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois fundamentally changed the representation of Black Americans with his exhibition of data visualizations at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Beautiful in design and powerful in content, these data portraits make visible a wide spectrum of African American culture, from advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery. They convey a literal and figurative representation of what he famously referred to as the color line. The plates were collected in the book W.E.B. Du Bois Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America. To celebrate Black History Month in February of 2022, the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation (OPI) teamed up with other City analysts to build a library of data visualizations inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois. Our goal was to learn from his team’s work, use modern data, and tell a present-day story about Blackness in America. To leave feedback or ask a question about this dataset, please fill out the following form: Re: Visualizing Black America feedback form.