Above All Made by Themselves: The Visual Rhetoric of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Visualizations

ABSTRACT

In this article, I examine and contextualize a selection of award-winning data visualizations created by W. E. B. Du Bois and his team for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, France. I show that Du Bois’s success with these data visualizations is partially attributable to the ways in which he merged artistic creativity with statistical empiricism to overcome the practical and ideological constraints of his rhetorical situation, namely a need to be seen amongst the fair’s larger spectacle and a refutation of the “scientific” racism that pervaded academia at the time. The research presented confirms Du Bois as an important but previously unrecognized progenitor of data visualization and therefore deserving of much more recognition in the fields of technical and professional communication (TPC) and data visualization than he currently receives. Ultimately, I argue that his achievement recommends useful lessons for contemporary scholars, practitioners, and pedagogues of TPC and data design.

KEYWORDS:

• Design of communication
• history of technical communication
• visual rhetoric/visualization techniques
• racism
• resiliency
• data visualization
• data design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Given its topic – the decrease in illiteracy among freed slaves in all states – I have included the plate recently discovered by Forrest (2018) in the US set.

2. August Weismann was an influential evolutionary theorist, second to Darwin during this time, and attributed the majority of human circumstances to genetics. Francis Galton was a British polymath, cousin to Charles Darwin, and progenitor of eugenics.

3. Not to be confused with the 1903 book The Negro Problem, a collection of essays by influential Black American writers that included Du Bois himself.

4. To this day, Shaler is a respected historical figure at Harvard; a seminar room in the Geological Museum is named after him, and each year a teaching fellow is awarded the Shaler Teaching Award.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Van Winkle

Kevin Van Winkle is an assistant professor of English and director of the Communication and Rhetoric program at Colorado State University-Pueblo.